Song of Darkness contains themes that is intended for mature audiences. This includes, but is not limited to, depictions of violence, death, psycchological trauma, and morally complex characters. 

Reader discretion is strongly advised.

A cold breeze, a few droplets of water falling from the sky, and a gray heavy cloud above. A clear sign that rain is coming.

Well, it’s not like they would care anyway. The two who stood half a mile away from each other atop the roofs of collapsing buildings hundreds of feet above the ground.

They were both so drenched in sweat from fighting that those droplets weren’t even noticeable. It had been an hour since they started, though time was the last thing on their minds.

The entire area, a destroyed city that’s been abandoned for decades. Moss clinging to every surrounding structure. Rubble and broken glass everywhere below. Even beyond the rain cloud, the sky was such a bleak shade of blue.

It didn’t matter to them though. Something more pressing concerned them. An issue so intense it could only be solved in a place as desolate as this.

This was a fight that was never supposed to happen. A battle neither truly wanted.

But the door to the room of inevitability was forced open and now these two were trapped in it.

Suddenly, one of them moved.

A jump so high and far, they practically covered at least half of the distance between them in just that second.

A man with a long dark ponytail blowing heavily behind his head and his crimson red eyes burning a sharp gaze down below.

The black jacket he was wearing just a moment ago had now fallen off revealing a well-toned body and a full display of a large spider tattoo that covered the entirety of his neck.

Behind him, three long katanas with a black and red-colored hilt appeared, floating and pointed at the one on the other roof.

The one on the other roof stared them down. Though, something was strange about this boy.

His hair… It flickered between brown and white slowly. The color of his left eye… Blue. Then white. Then blue again. White again.

He shrugged off the black blazer he wore and rolled up the sleeves of the white undershirt beneath it.

As it dropped to the floor, the flickering then stopped. His hair and eye remained white.

A hand raised to the sky.

Snap

A single snap and his arms became engulfed in a blue flame.

Hidden under the flame, something pulsated. It was his arms. It was… growing bigger?

The skin on his arms. From a light tan color to dark black. Something blue and vein-like moving throughout it. His arms looked demonic as it grew. Long black nails growing on the fingers. From flesh to something as hard as the toughest stone.

Then he jumped too.

Immediately, the three katanas shot at him in a blur of silver. His fists slammed against each blade as they shattered into pieces. It didn't take but a few seconds for the two to be in front of each other.

The sound of the katana’s metal clashing against the boy’s hardened arms reverberated through the air as they both fell straight down. It was too late to stop and before they realized it, the ground was an inch away.

Thud

That cold breeze was now a heavy wind. Those few droplets, a shower of rain.

Still, it didn’t matter.

The first to get up was the ponytailed man. Blood trickled down his forehead and his upper body was covered in welts, bruises, and broken glass shards.

Despite the pain, he ripped them out and mustered the strength to summon another katana.

Then the white haired boy slowly stood up. His hair and eye again, flickering between colors. His white shirt, drenched and ripped, exposing the wounds on his body.

Walking on this dangerous ground would be an arduous task but again, it didn’t matter.

He looked into the crimson eyes of the man. There was an emptiness in them as if he wasn't really there.

The boy’s hair and eye stopped flickering but this time, his hair remained brown and his eye, his natural blue. His arms returned to normal. For some reason, the boy had made the decision to stop fighting at that moment.

The man slowly approached the boy and raised his blade.

The boy's eyes closed as he braced himself.

Stab

He felt something warm on his face and chest. As if something had spilled on him.

He touched it.

Liquid.

Thick.

Blood.

But… it wasn’t his blood.

The boy opened his eyes.

The first thing to come into his vision was the color of their hair but that was all he needed to see to recognize the woman in front of him.

Everything happened too fast.

A single cough and blood slowly dripped from her mouth.

The man slowly pulled the blade out of her chest as she dropped into the boy's arms. The emptiness in his eyes was gone. Life had suddenly returned to them.

He registered everything around him, his eyes darting everywhere. The environment. The rain. The woman and the boy himself. His eyes dropped to his katana, coated in red.

They widened.

But it wasn’t just the man who had suddenly changed at that moment.

With the lifeless body of the woman in his arms, the boy's breathing sped up. His chest. Up and down. Up and down. His frantic breathing spilled out of his mouth.

Hair flickering between brown and white faster than ever before. His eye, blue to white, blue to white like a broken light.

His panic made him drop the woman in his arms.

The moment her body hit the ground, it seemed as if the rain had just stopped. Everything was suddenly... gray.

The man felt his stomach churn. Plagued with a number of emotions, he felt something in the air change.

Then he heard it.

A loud screech that echoed throughout the entire abandoned city. The noise was so uncanny, it surely could not have been human.

That was when the man looked it in the eye. Immediately, he realized the one he gazed at was something far from the person he knew.

It vanished in a blink.

The man knew what was coming as he looked down upon his trembling hands. He had pieced together everything and recognized his fault. He accepted this consequence subconsciously.

The rain returned. This time, even harder.

The man let his blade fall to the ground.

“I wish we…” His voice drowned under the sound of the heavy rain.