It was a night where the frost gnawed at the very bones of the "Upper World."
The stars were driven into the barren sky like splinters of cold, merciless diamonds. They stared down with utter indifference.
The only disruption to the silence was the dying breaths of Shin Zero.
A rattle.
He exhaled with a deathly rasp. His breath escaped as broken vapor, struggling against the freezing cold.
Below him, the gray rock turned into a funeral canvas. It was stained crimson. The deep red flowed from his body like a roaring torrent that knew no end.
Shin was drowning in his own blood.
From the strands of his white hair, stiffened by the fight, to the soles of his boots submerged in a pool of darkness.
His left eye was a hollow abyss, screaming with pain.
The right—that "Green Emerald" that once radiated life—had been struck by a treacherous blade.
The shallow cut hid its beauty behind a film of dried blood that erased its luster.
Totally.
Before this human ruin stood seven beings. They looked as if they had erupted from legends of tyranny.
They radiated a blinding yellow glow. They claimed holiness.
Their bodies were cloaked in pure white, with golden collars that stole the eyes. Royal coats were fastened with belts of pure gold.
It gave them a false majesty. A dignity that hid hearts of stone.
The one in the lead stepped forward.
He unleashed a voice that was booming. Thick. Charged with an abyssal arrogance.
He spoke as if sanctifying himself, oblivious to how utterly loathsome he was:
"Shin Zero... You have slaughtered innocent souls beyond count. You rebelled against our decrees."
"Therefore, by the absolute authority we have granted ourselves as rulers of this Upper World..."
"We sentence you to death!"
Shin did not waver.
His emerald, wounded eye did not blink with surprise. He knew, in his deepest self, that the blade of treason had been polished behind his back for a long time.
Fifty years of faithful service were nothing but a cheap price in their eyes!
From his chest, a smothered laugh escaped.
A rattle.
Drenched in blood. It carried the bitterness of two hundred years of existence. Fifty years evaporated like smoke, spent in the service of masters who knew no loyalty.
With sorrow, he asked himself: When and how did this slavery begin?
All he sought, all his exhausted heart ever wanted, was merely a "quiet life."
A simple right to peace.
But... when was peace ever available to his kind?
(Kuh...)
Blood exploded from his mouth with a cough. Announcing the fall of the final curtain.
In those moments between existence and nothingness, he wished for one thing: to die surrounded by familiar faces. By hearts that loved him and would mourn him.
But with bitterness, he realized he lived as a stranger and would die alone.
No family to warm him. No friends to support his head.
Only his faithful sword, the sole companion that never failed him in the fiercest battles. It lay beside him, sharing the final silence.
Vision dissolved. His body grew heavy. A mountain of lead. Slowly, his mind drowned in a dense fog.
It pulled away from the noise of the world and into the stillness of the shadow.
He couldn't resist.
The last trace of sight vanished.
He died. No final words. No legacy.
He died standing, head held high. A finish befitting a warrior who roamed the fields for two centuries. Even if he died alone.
"What if?.."
A sterile question. It echoed through the crumbling corridors of his soul.
What if he had never stepped onto that cursed path?
Would the fabric of fate have been woven with threads of light instead of this pitch black?
These thoughts haunted him like ghosts that never slept. A burning desire to be surrounded by human warmth. For a family to gather his pieces and care for him.
His family was never a haven. It was his exile. Brothers whose hearts dripped with hatred. Parents from whom he only tasted coldness.
Even that single lantern that lit his darkness with affection... it was extinguished in a treacherous mission. Leaving him alone to battle the wind.
No one wept for him. And in turn... blood froze in his veins. He no longer cared for anyone.
Suddenly, consciousness jolted! Like a spark in the pitch black of night.
How were these thoughts tossing him around when he had just fallen dead moments ago?
He tried to grasp his surroundings. He found only black.
A darkness so dense it nearly strangled his breath. He could not even see his hand, even as he tried to move it.
Yet, in the far distance, a sliver of faint light loomed. Frail as a struggling hope.
He tried to move. He felt his body sink into a viscous material.
It felt like water, but with the coldness of death.
He struggled against this fluid. He paddled with exhausted hands and legs towards that light, which grew brighter and more violent with every inch.
'Is this the "light at the end of the tunnel" I always mocked?' he asked bitterly.
His life was nothing but an eternal tunnel. A dark corridor with no end to its gloom and no solace at its close.
Closer... and closer...
Until the light became radiant enough to tear his eyelids. He could not keep them open against this white deluge.
He touched it.
And in that instant... all senses were erased.
He regained consciousness, feeling his eyelids tremble.
Or so it seemed. Vision was chaotic. The scene was foggy.
What confirmed that he returned to the world of the living was not his sight. It was his nose.
A foul odor seeped in. A mixture of wet mud where stagnant waters had gathered. The smell of old, rotting wood.
He couldn't understand where he was. Or how he escaped the claws of death.
The picture cleared.
Suddenly, shock struck his body. It froze his joints.
He realized the source of that sickening smell. He was not in a palace, nor even a simple house. He lay in something resembling a crumbling "shack" that reeked of rot.
And with the rot, there was another smell, far darker.
The smell of blood.
Slowly, he turned his gaze.
His being shuddered at what he saw. Vast stains of dried, black blood. They clung to the muddy floor like accursed tattoos, telling the story of a silent massacre that occurred in this abandoned place.
He could not determine his location. He could not understand what was happening.
By all accounts, I should be dead!!
Finally, his gaze returned to his own state.
His soul screamed in absolute shock:
"Where in the hell am I?!"