Chapter 1: Hatred
The cold night in the NQSC middle-class neighborhood was broken only by the soft click of a lock. A boy of about sixteen years of age slipped into his house, the hour late.
The air inside was warm and carried the thick, cloying reek of cheap alcohol, a scent that clung to the modest furnishings despite their best efforts to appear clean.
The boy sighed wearily as he bypassed the living room and made his way to the stairs, each step a familiar effort. But as he reached the top, the silence was shattered by sounds from his father's room—a sharp cry, followed by a low, throaty moan.
The boy froze, his face twisting in disgust. 'Another Hooker...Great. Just fucking great.'
It seemed his drunken mess of a father had brought yet another prostitute home...
He didn't hesitate further. Striding into his own room, he dropped his bag with a thud and immediately snatched a pair of headphones from his desk, clamping them over his ears. The tinny blast of music was a welcome shield, muffling the grotesque symphony from down the hall.
Collapsing onto his bed, he stared at the cracked ceiling, the white paint stained and yellowing. In the artificial silence, the memories came unbidden, washing over him like a tide.
---
—Memory—
"Hugo!"
A woman's voice called out, warm and full of affection, devoid of any anger. A young boy, no older than six, was a whirlwind of energy, his small legs carrying him across the synthetic grass of the NQSC park. A brilliant, untainted smile was carved onto his face, a peaceful, beautiful expression untouched by the horrors that lurked at the edges of their world.
Hugo rushed toward the sound, crashing into his mother's legs and wrapping his arms around her. "Ma! Can you play with me?" he pleaded, his voice dripping with innocent hope.
She patted his head gently before bending down to his level, her own smile elegant and heart-wrenchingly kind. "Of course, honey. After all, if I didn't play with you, who else would?"
Right then, as they turned toward the center of the park, the world itself shifted.
The very air grew still, holding its breath as if awaiting an executioner's blow. Then, reality didn't just ripple—it cracked, violently and without warning.
In mere moments, the entire world went mad.
Dozens of harrowing figures spilled from a tear in the world like a dark plague, their forms monstrous and wrong. The pristine green of the synthetic grass was instantly stained a brutal, shocking red.
***
The scene fragmented, reforming on a nearby road. Hugo's mother now carried him, his small body clutched tightly against her chest as she ran. Panic was etched onto her face, a raw, primal fear.
Of course she was afraid; she wasn't an Awakened and a Category 2 Gate had opened without a single warning from the Obel Scale, making evacuation impossible.
***
Hugo watched it all with a blank expression, his childish mind struggling to process the impossible speed of it all.
His mother stumbled, then she fell to the ground violently.
A horrific, sharp claw protruded from her chest, dripping with her blood. In her final act, she twisted her body as she fell, shielding Hugo and preventing the talon from piercing him too.
She collapsed, her arms still locked around him in a tight embrace.
"I... I'm sorry..." she whispered, the words a wet, gurgling breath.
The light in her eyes flickered and died in an instant...
And just as the beast loomed over them, its harrowing fangs poised to descend, another figure appeared.
It moved like an angel of death. With impossible speed and grace, her scythe flashed through the air and the abomination was severed in half.
The woman quickly shifted her stance, her brow furrowing as she noticed the dead woman near her.
She sighed, looking at her with a somber expression.
"Your nightmare is over..."
Then, she saw the body slightly twitch. In an instant, her instincts as an awakened—although a fairly new one—kicked in and she took a step forward, ready to dismember the corpse, fearing that some parasitic abomination had already taken over the woman's body.
But what she found was far more horrifying than any monster.
A little boy, perhaps five or six, was clinging to his mother's body. He was trying to shake her awake as if she was merely taking a nap.
His small frame was drenched in her blood and his Translucent tears carved clean paths through the crimson mask on his face, turning red as they fell onto her lifeless form.
Soul Reaper stared at the odd scene, her professional composure shattered and turned... Unsightly.
For a long moment, the world stopped. The government Awakened battling Nightmare Creatures in the background, the countless other dead mundane humans —it all faded into a meaningless blur. There was only her, and the boy smeared in his mother's blood.
For the first time in a long, long while, Jet was brutally reminded of how harrowing and cruel this world was.
Of how cruel the Nightmare Spell truly was.
A hundred thoughts raced through her mind:
Should I apologize for being too late?
Should I comfort him? But how? How do you comfort a child drowning in his mother's blood?
In the end, Jet said nothing and simply carried the boy out of there.
This single scene would become a ghost that tormented her for the rest of her life as an Awakened, and most importantly a second, powerful driver for her relentless rampage against the creatures of the nightmare.
***
Back in the present, the torrent of memories slowly receded, leaving Hugo hollowed out. He saw it all again: the endless therapy sessions he still attended, his father's slow decline into madness by alcohol and strangers...
Strangely, his life despite its tragedy, was empty.
He only felt the familiar hatred that had plagued his mind since that harrowing day... hatred for himself, for the Nightmare Creatures and for the Spell itself.
And most of all, he remembered the cold, blue eyes of the woman who had saved him that day. Even through a haze of blood and tears, the image of Soul Reaper Jet—the famous government Awakened who was now an Ascended—was burned into his very soul. The cold, unrelenting promise of bloodshed in her gaze still haunted him.
It was terrifying and eerie, the look of a killer...
But oddly enough, He wanted it. He wanted that same look in his own eyes He wanted to become like her one day. He wanted the power to kill and kill again, to erase all the abominations from the world one by one untill there was only humans left.
But for now, Hugo was just a boy curled into a tight ball on his bed, his legs clutched tightly to his chest.
Eventually, his tears ran dry and he fell to the embrace of sleep.
The next day, he would wake to find himself in a strange, hazy state.