Everyone in the small town of Havenport that looked up that day would notice an angel with circulating eyes hovering in the sky. They always soared past on occasion, but this one stopped for a long while, analyzing the town. Before anyone could do anything to prepare or react, a red laser began to beam down on the city. Buildings crumbled, crowds of people disintegrated, grasslands and crops burned. In the blink of an eye, a thriving town was reduced to ash.
Despite meeting certain death from the angel, one man stood defeated near a lonely cave. He felt almost comforted in how empty it was. A breeze touched his face, and he felt compelled to turn around and look back at the blue sky one last time. He watched for a brief moment as the clouds passed ever so gently. With a sigh, he took a deep breath and continued walking deeper into the cave. Was it a blessing or a curse that he survived?
The approaching shadows on the cave walls made him duck and evade, forcing himself to cower. They were faster than him, and it was far too late to run. Since that day, the eyes had been following him. The cave walls would move ever so slightly, like a living breathing being, and populate in eyes. Watching. A dark reminder of what he witnessed not so long ago. An angel destroying everything.
He spent the next few hours staring at the eyes in the wall as he continued to traverse the cave. It was getting darker every second, but he became too tired to care. In the end, they only tormented him mentally, not physically. He could take this torture for eternity. The young man, known as Kazuto, welcomed the darkening. It was the only thing that silenced their screams of terror. The people were burning to ash-- he still heard them and their doubts had soaked into his mind. Doubts that he’d never be a hero. Well, now no one on Havenporte could be a hero. He tried so hard to be free, and to help those in need. And yet, at the end, he let everyone down.
That spot at the back of the cave became his home. He let his skin wrinkle and crumble, his hair go from black to gray, his eyes weaken in sight and stop seeing properly. Finally, an eternity had passed. His heart began to palpitate as he reached the end.
"This is all I’ll ever be," he thought to himself.
The dark void of the afterlife was something that Kazuto could feel, grasping at the air and feeling space-time tickle his fingers. He could feel his existence going in and out between each cell of his body, wiggling his toes and feeling them vibrate between spacetime, creating anomalies and paradoxes with each shake. There was nowhere to go, nothing to see, and yet a flooding feeling of everything. It was like closing his eyes, but with light bleeding through-- seeing nothing yet knowing a world awaits.
Deep inside, Kazuto felt something awaken in him. His lifeless soul which had once let itself rot away had rejuvenated and become filled with hope. He thought to himself that he would live, that he would open his eyes and come back to this twisted world!
Light began to beam into existence. Kazuto reached his hand forward, trying to grasp at the dust.
“That’s weird,” he said to himself, noticing his hands were smaller than usual.
Details in the room began to fill in piece by piece, as if generated by his eyesight. From the wooden bed and stiff mattress he always complained about as a child, to the cooking supplies hung up on the wall next to him. He was at his old, small Havenporte house. As an adult, he would’ve called a house with no separation between a kitchen and a sleeping area small, but even the feeling of his child self considering it huge returned. He was in the past, and his feelings and thoughts were a mixture of the past and present.
Kazuto's mother entered the room with a loud thud as the door closed. She dressed in brown peasant rags, her hair up in a ponytail. Her black hair resembled his, but her eyes were green instead of blue. His eyes were like his father's. One day, he hoped to meet his father. But if this past ended up the same as what he had lived, there was no way he’d ever meet him.
“Are you alright, Kazuto? Bad dream?” his mom asked him with a smile.
“Yeah, mom,” Kazuto cringed at his prepubescent squeaking voice, “My dream… it was awful.”
He was either nine or ten. He had to be based on his voice, and the appearance of his mom gave it away even more. She was definitely ten years younger.
His mother approached him and locked eyes with his face. She then widened her grin from ear to ear.
"No need to make such a sour face! You know what used to always cheer you up? A nice walk! Say, wanna walk with me down to the market? I have some debt to clear up."
Kazuto's instincts took over and forced him to respond, "No." It was a strange and unusual feeling. He had never spoken against his will before. Must’ve been the kid inside of him.
"Wait-- I'd love to go. I'm not sure why I said that, ma. I'm sorry." He nodded at her.
His mother looked over with a skeptical face, before saying, "It's alright. Just try to be certain of things the first time. Might help you in the future."
Kazuto’s mother held out her hand and invited him over with a smile. He grasped her hand as she opened the door. Light from the outside world overwhelmed the room, creating the endless essence of a bright summer day. It was the type of light only an observant person could notice was that strong, one of the signifiers being that you could notice dust particles in the air.
Kazuto took one step outside and was a bit overwhelmed by how much more lively Havenporte was than they remembered. People were out enjoying the weather in all sorts of ways. Some pedestrians were trading goods, and others were simply conversing. The red and brown brick buildings felt like castles to someone as small as Kazuto. Their grasp on their mother's hand tightened as they gazed around. They looked ahead to a bridge path which crossed over a stream; next to it a waterfall.
“Look, look! A waterfall, dad!” a young boy said as he tugged on his father's blue shirt. The dad just laughed as he pulled the boy away from the water, back onto the bridge.
Meanwhile, Kazuto couldn’t stop noticing the déjà vu details, and gazed a lot more than they normally would. The orange tint of the sun was one they had seen before. The heat from it was one they could smell before. The flowers gave off an aroma that combated the sweat coming from all of their clothes, leaving a bit of a medium smell that is neither horrible nor great. The position of people also clearly gave away what they had experienced that day.
They couldn’t help but remember this specific day because of the events that happened later. They clearly remember their mother had left them alone the first time this day had gone by and returned home wounded and crying. She was mugged on her way home and stabbed in the stomach. They tried to get her to a healer, but when they saw how poor their wallets were, they were turned down. Her dress was even a bit wet, which was a bit strikingly odd. Blood is quite thick, but there was a part on her that was not as thick as blood and was too far from the wound. It had to be water.
That was when their ears picked up the sound of the trickling river water. The falling waterfall that they were walking right towards. They tugged on their mother's hand.
"Mom… maybe we shouldn't cross the bridge?" they asked. Their mother gave them a confused look and began to stride faster.
"I'm serious, mom," Kazuto said, brushing some dust off of their overalls. "Isn't the other way downtown faster?"
Their mother shook her head no and continued to walk off the bridge. The woman was determined and nothing seemed to sway her mind.
Not long after leaving the bridge did she encounter a short hooded girl about the same age as Kazuto. She had black pigtails and kept a lot of her face hidden under her oversized cloak.
"Ma'am," the young girl said, holding a bouquet of white flowers, "Have you seen my parents? I got lost at the flower shop," the girl asked.
Their mother turned her attention to surveying the area. She turned around to see if she could spot the young girl's parents anywhere. It was in that split moment that the young girl had unsheathed a dagger from the bouquet.
Once again, Kazuto felt something inside them that they couldn’t stop-- they couldn't control themselves and their actions. Their body flung itself forward, propelling into the girl in front of them. They tackled her into the concrete, making her drop the knife as well. Both of their bodies dragged on for a moment until reaching a halt of momentum. The young girl began to punch and kick at them to push them off, but they gripped on as hard as they could.
"What the hell is going on?" The bystanders asked.
"Did that girl have a knife? Are these kids fighting?"
Everyone who had viewed the incident murmured among each other.
"Get off of him!" His mother yelled as she approached the two of them.
The bandit reached for her knife, grabbing it with the full extent of her arm.
"Get any fucking closer, and he's dead!" she threatened.
Everything couldn’t get more tense. At least not until the shining blue armored elegant hero’s cape fluttered in the wind. The hero known as The Hero of the Shadow rode his horse towards the scene. He had dark spiky hair and gray eyes-- he dismounted his horse and approached the situation.
“Excuse me, what’s going on? Is something the matter?” the hero asked before saying, “Young girl, get up. Come here.”
The hero whispered something to the girl as she walked over to him. People began to disperse now that the fight was over.
"Well, we can't just attack someone in broad daylight, can we? With that said, this is settled. Carry on now," he said to himself.
Her mother had tears in her eyes. She seemed to jump up when saying, "I can't thank you enough! My son, he loves heroes like you." To the hero of shadow.
The hero of the shadow began to laugh to himself. What started as a small giggle had transitioned into an uncomfortable to witness scream laugh.
The hero seemed disgruntled. His eyes darted from left to right as sweat beads fell down his face.
“Mister? Are you alright?” Kazuto asked the hero who had just saved him.
“Word to the wise, kid… Heroes aren’t everything you thought they were,” the hero of the shadow muttered.
Before Kazuto could question him, he saw the hero whip his weapon towards his gut. With a single slash, his torso dismembered from his legs.
“Kazuto? Kazuto!” His mother screamed out to him.
The hero of the shadow demanded, "Guards, clean up this fucking mess. Arrest the woman. We’re done here."
All Kazuto ever wanted was to be a hero. In his last seconds of mental awareness, he saw the hero kneel down to his body and mutter to him.
“You can revive, can’t you? Don’t worry. I’ll find you-- every time you do. And we’ll repeat this process.”
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