“Ughhh!” Bloodstar spat out a mouthful of blood. He sneered as he tried calming his trembling body. A tree trunk appeared before him, and he rested his back along it.

“Nightmare fuel…I must thank you…” Bloodstar clenched his third-degree-burn-filled hand. The simple movement of his fingers was enough to send him into agony, but what else could he do but run? It wasn’t like his enemies would let him heal completely before chasing him away.

Not only his arm but his entire body was covered with burns spots and stripes. His manacore was at the bare minimum level of mana, so his stomach twisted and turned from his movement. He had to puke on numerous occasions in the escape alone.

But despite the severe repercussions, Bloodstar was glad to have used it. Only an attack on that level could incapacitate a powerful figure like Axer enough for him to escape.

“Too weak…I’m far too weak.” He huffed a sigh. From his tattered robes, he pulled a vial filled with a dark-red liquid – blood. Specifically, troll’s blood.

Bloodstar managed to open the vial despite his trembling arms. How irritating. He drank every drop of blood in the vial until nothing remained.

Bloodstar grimaced. It tasted sour like a rotten orange yet burned like a ghost pepper – a terrible, truly horrific taste. However, a soothing warmth passed through his body as the blood fell into his stomach. He watched in amazement as the burns on his hands healed at a visible rate. No matter how many times it occurred, the ability never ceased to amaze him.

It's only thanks to this that I could gain such a magnificent ability.

He placed a hand over his heart. Its once rapid beating had now calmed into a dull thump like a slow drummer. But as he listened closer, letting the sound of cricket chirps fade away, letting the rustle of leaves fill his mind with lake-like calmness, letting the very sound of night vanish from his presence, he heard it. The hum of…something. On and off. On, on, off, off, off, on, off, on. The sound of it whirring.

A piece of metal it was. A burnt, soiled scrap that had barely been jutting from the wet soil of a freshly eroded earth. A violent rainstorm had swept the forest hours prior, tearing up the great magnolia trees and laying them on the ground like corpses amidst a battlefield.

Bloodstar knew not what possessed him to visit that forest, at that time, over a decade ago. Was it because of the potential rewards from reaping the carcasses of the forest’s dead inhabitants? Was it because his mother, who asked for nothing yet gave her everything for him, nurtured one such inhabitant with all her strength? Never had he received an answer for any of it.

…

“Urghh…what is…this…” He had been wading through the collapsed trees and murky sea of pink. But now he stumbled upon a particular intersection with tree upon tree stacked up vertically while stretching horizontally. Left with no choice but to remove the obstacle, Bloodstar clutched the trunk thicker than the length between the tip of his finger and his elbow and pulled with great force. It didn’t budge.

All I can do is climb.

Standing nearly a two-story building’s size in height (how in heaven had it collapsed to become like that?), it posed a difficult obstacle. Bloodstar’s trembling, bone-thin arm reached out, grabbing the trunk with difficulty. The damp soil sticking to his bare feet chilled his body. It was cold. Terribly cold. But he had no choice. Or did he? He couldn’t tell. All he needed was a remedy. A cure. A potion to rid himself of the pain.

Go. Push. You can’t be weak!

Bloodstar hoisted himself up. A tangled “web” of wood and branches was his opponent, which he meant with burning vigor. He broke the branches in his way despite the pain running through his arms each time. He scaled the humongous tree trunks, clutching branches and whatnot to stabilize his figure. And finally, after a struggle of untold minutes, Bloodstar arrived at the top.

What happened could only be described as chaos. A jumbled forest upheaved from the claws of mother nature’s wrath.

The great magnolia trees – not to be confused with normal magnolias – lay slumped on the ground for kilometers on end. The once lusciously green soil was turned inside out, countless new hills dotting the horizon. The once great Flushed Forest, known for its symbol of love, loved for its representation of happiness, was now a desolate wasteland of murky pink. It was like a sign from the heavens – with the collapse of his life came the collapse of the forest. Even more so, it was a forest filled with trees his mother loved – more accurately, had loved.

A tear slid down his cheek, carrying the dirt and grime covering him as it fell into the dark chasm made from the hollow areas of the collapsed trees. And soon, more tears followed.

He howled for his mother. For his sister. For his brother. The heavens were cruel. The earth was merciless. All that was left for him was hell.

What had he done? What sin had he committed? His village was poor, terribly poor; no, it could have ranked number one for the poorest village in existence. It was so bad that sometimes, he had to eat bugs to not go hungry for the night. His water was always dirty, and his meat was always at the edge of rotting. Terrible couldn’t even begin to describe the way he had lived.

But despite all that, his mother never lost the smile on her face. Day by day, she tolled hard in the fields to replace his bastard father, who ran off with another woman, in hopes of one day elevating their status enough to where they didn’t have to live like animals. From dawn to dusk, she made sure to put at least one meal on the table, no matter how humble. Her love for her three children was so great it seemed to eclipse a mountain.

Bloodstar never complained. He, too, helped his mother whenever he could, however he could, all for the sake of seeing that smile remain on her face. Her beloved magnolia tree that stood erect in the backyard was like another sibling to him. When she couldn’t take care of it, he did. Their life was finally taking an upward turn. Eventually, they would escape the damn village. When he did, he would take over the family, earn piles upon piles of syli and let his family live like royalty. Never again would they have to toil away at the fields. Never again would they be forced to eat bugs when their bastard lord refused to pay his mother’s wages. Never again!

And that’s when everything in his life collapsed. A “plague,” they called it. Bloodstar called it bullshit. His family caught it in the morning. They complained of fever, stomach pains, and intense chills, amongst other symptoms. He worked throughout the day to ensure their well-being. When he thought everything was going well, when he thought everything would go back to normal the next day, there they were, lying on a bed, their bodies shriveled like months-old corpses dug up from the ground.

He didn’t know how much he screamed. How much he cursed. How much he begged the heavens to bring them back. His sweet mother, who never committed a sin in her life, his docile little sister, who had trouble hurting a fly, and his brave little brother, who vowed to protect the family when he came to age, none of them deserved it. None of them deserved to suffer so cruelly. So why? Why was it him? Why did he live? Why did they die?

And it wasn’t just them, but the entire village. Only he, […], had survived. From there, it was automatic. He gave each and every villager a proper burial. However, he never prayed to the heavens, for it was the heavens who caused this. Why would he ask for peace from the very thing that took it from him?

And now, a few weeks later, here he stood in the broken Flushed Forest, unable to comprehend the meaning behind his existence.

Perhaps suicide…is the best option.

“Huh?”

As he attempted to shift his weight leftwards, his foot missed! He fell back, hitting tree after tree like a ragdoll. Each hit left his head ringing and body aching. He tried to grab onto a trunk, tried to latch onto something, but to no avail.

He landed in a dark, murky “trunk cave” with a squish. Luckily, the soil remained soft from the excess amounts of rainwater it absorbed. Thin rays of dying sunlight cast their radiance in the cave. Leaves, small branches, uprooted grasses, and the carcass of a single rabbit were all that existed in this narrow space. The rabbit must have been prey for another animal, as its head had been eaten, but its body was left unscathed save for a few cuts and bruises.

“Urgghh…” Bloodstar groaned. A sharp pain shot through his wrist. It must be broken.

He cursed his luck. Not only had he fallen into an enclosed, hard-to-escape area, but he also had injuries on top of that as well. Was he fated to die here?

Using his other arm, Bloodstar clutched a small but thick branch jutting from one of the collapsed tree trunks and used it to stand up. His body ached and groaned. His muscles burned as he shook uncontrollably.

“Ahh!” The moment his foot hit the ground, it struck a smooth, hard surface. He promptly fell from his loosened grip and collapsed head-first into the soil.

What made me fall?

What seemed to be a rounded corner of a metal jutted from the ground. Its black surface gently glowed under the sun’s rays. It had a smooth texture that reminded Bloodstar of a blackened, folded piece of obsidian.

Curiosity overtook him. When he tried to pull it from the ground, it remained still like a sleeping bull. I won’t be successful like this.

Using a rough-surfaced rock the size of his fist, Bloodstar shoveled the surrounding dirt. If he had anything to thank the rainstorm for, it was making the soil pliable. With only a few strokes of his uninjured arm, Bloodstar extracted the dangerous metal that nearly gave him a brain injury.

“What…is this?”

It was an ellipsoid. Smooth, black metal comprised its structure, almost like an egg but even at the endpoints. A peculiar artifact.

Could it be makings of a time-wealthy blacksmith?

It couldn’t be that either. The sole blacksmith of his village, though not busy all the time due to the lack of resources, would never waste precious metal in such a manner. It couldn’t be a nearby village either, as his village was the closest (not anymore, at least), and no blacksmith would come to the forest to dump their metals.

[Blood sample detected. Owner verified.]

What?

An eerie female’s voice appeared in his head, but no one was around him. Was it a ghost? Bloodstar nervously scanned the enclosed space. Maybe it was the ghost of the dead rabbit? He scrutinized its corpse, but he shook his head. A silly conjecture, but blood?

A cut on his revealed a thin stream of blood hitting the metal “egg” (although describing it as an egg was inaccurate, it was the best fitting name, at least amongst the vocabulary he had).

[Initiation complete. Beginning merge.]

“AHHHH!” Bloodstar screamed with intense agony. The metal egg suddenly melted into a metal goop that bore into his arm. It left a gaping mess of blood, and flesh shreds the diameter of a pencil. His arm went numb. His nerves jittered from its worm-like tendency. His muscles tore as it left a trail of destruction within his body.

“ARGHHH!” It burst through his chest like a tsunami. It was like a rat digging a tunnel. He knew not how much internal damage it caused. All he knew was pain. For weeks he had to suffer through the mental agony of losing his family; now, he had to endure the physical torture of something tearing apart his body from within.

It reached his heart. It would tear it apart like a flimsy sheet of paper, finally killing him. Maybe it was a good thing. Maybe this was his calling. His village had suffered first, entering the afterlife before him. Now it was his turn to suffer and enter the afterlife. It was better this way. No longer would he have to endure the misery of not having his family by his side. No longer would he have to realize that he had nothing left in this world, no purpose, no passion. He could finally be with his family again.

I mustn’t resist what fate has set for me.

But no matter how long he waited, the sweet release of death never came. In fact, the pain itself had disappeared. Aside from his bloodied hand and blood leaking from his mouth, no evidence of it existed. The excruciating painful hole in his palm was gone as if it hadn’t existed in the first place.

“What’s…happening…” He had a sore voice, evidently from ragged screaming. He had obviously screamed; he had obviously been in pain, but was it simply an illusion?

No.

He put a hand to his heart. It beat steadily like the tunes of a gentle drum. But behind it, ever so faint, ever so existent, was a whirring, on and off, in an unsteady, unnatural rhythm. It buzzed like a bee and hummed like a hummingbird, a cacophony of gentle sounds. Beautiful. Calming. Everlasting.

…

“…and ever so revelating,” Bloodstar muttered as he opened his eyes. He hadn’t known then the power it brought. The strength. The purification.

Everything following that was a blur. All he could remember was slaying a monster and a ferocious bloodlust welling in him. In a moment of barbaric savagery, he bit into its delectable carcass and swallowed its blood. And then, the enlightenment. Oh, so sweet. Oh, so heavenly. Oh, so perfect!

His family died because he was weak. His family died because they were weak. His village died because they were weak. He injured his hand because he was weak. That monster died because it was weak. Weakness. Weakness. The terrible, plague-like weakness.

“I’ll remove it. I’ll erase it! I’ll vanquish all weakness from this desolate world!”

“Thank you for guiding me to the correct path! Thank you for showing me the sins of the weak!”