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He hadn't always been living in darkness. Years ago, maybe a century or two, he had known warmth, affection, even love, and those were the happiest days of his life. His godforsaken life. Everything had seemed all right back then, like as if there was nothing left for him to achieve, because he had won it all.
It was true that the 80th District wasn't much of a playground. It wasn't much fun for kids to spend their days, staining their childhood with visions of blood and decapitated bodies, but it was a hunting ground for murderers and bandits alike. They prowled the streets with eyes like that of hawks, scanning for their next victim with as much bloodlust as forbidden desire. That was why children were never allowed to play outside whenever night befell the district, for that was when those with ill will in their hearts came out to have their own fun. Children who ignored their parents' advice, orders, would suffer a tragic end. Some would be eaten by those who were too unfortunate to find proper game, while most girls were toyed around with before being left broken in a dark alleyway, clothes all the more torn than before.
Despite people regarding him as such a person of malice, he wasn't one for picking on little, helpless children. In fact, he despised children. They never really took much liking to him either, scampering away whenever he so much as appeared within their line of vision. It was just as well though, as he would rather slaughter anyone who got in his way than ask politely for them to move.
Much contrasting his cold, distant nature, she would be the one to gather the children and play with them, lighten their days with talks of food and fairytales. He didn't know just where she got them from, but she seemed to be a chest brimming with fanciful tales of a place better than the 80th District, the hellhole of the Rukon.
He would find himself wanting to hear more of those tales. She would comply and relay them to him while brushing the rough strands from his face. The smile she wore whenever she looked at him was comforting, and it instilled much warmth in him that nothing else ever could.
That had been the smile to lead him out of darkness.
His own fairytale had lasted but a short while. Before he even knew it, everything came crashing down. She was gone even as he tried to reach out to her, to hold her and pull her back. There was nothing he could do, but till this day he was certain that if he had been more alert, more careful, then she would still be here. With her departure, his world was plunged into darkness once again.
But life had a way to make one feel like it was the end of the world, only to grab hold of one's hand and catapult one into yet another seemingly endless bliss.
He never really believed a disaster to turn out for the better, but, holding the sleeping infant now in his arms, he started to wonder whether he had been wrong all along. The day they met, the moment when she had reached out to touch his sword, was when he saw a flicker of light, a glimmer of hope.
It was his scepticism that held him back at first, but with each wail, each cry and scream that she made, he began to gravitate more towards the notion that she was his salvation. Often she drove him to the edge of wanting to murder her, but every time he made a move to do so, her smile would freeze him in place.
That smile was what yanked him back from darkness, and from there he knew that she was his light.