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Yudrein has lost track of the number of prisons he has been transported to, the torturers who've visited him in their desperate attempt to break him. Of the injuries accumulated on his battered body - flesh torn, skin burned, bones broken, no shattered - all merging together into a single, massive festering scar. Of the curses thrown his way, spoken first with mocking derision, then with fearful scorn, when he fails to give them any of the information they demand, fails even to react or cry out, no matter how creative they are in their destruction. Monster, they whisper. Perhaps it makes them feel better that way, a traitor, an inhuman thing, something they need not feel sorry about harming, no something that needs to be broken. Because if they pretend that he's the problem, then eliminating him will remove the shadow looming over the entire Empire. Will remove the threat that they are consciously trying to deny.
It hardly matters now, anyways. Despite his silence, the toll is becoming obvious on his body. He will not last much longer now; the only reason he’s lasted this long in the first place, is because he’s an Awakener, a resilience that still remains despite the pierced core that ensures that he can no longer use his powers. He opens his one remaining eye, expecting to be greeted by the familiar sight of his rotting prison cell, but instead…
He's no longer in an underground prison, but somewhere that looks completely foreign to him, in more ways than one. There's no obvious source of light here, but somehow he can still see perfectly fine. Not that there’s much to see. The landscape is dull, repetitive, empty, dead. He rises to his feet, slowly, even though his damaged legs should no longer be able to hold him. They throb dully, but no worse than when he had remained on the ground, so he starts walking. He’s not even sure if he hopes to find anything, or if it’s just to have something to do.
It’s difficult to determine how long he walks, since nothing seems to change around him. Finally, a figure appears before him in the distance, a tall woman, mostly hidden within a black mourning shroud. She spots him at the same time… or perhaps she has been waiting for him. She turns towards him and beckons for him to come with her. With nothing better to do, he follows her and soon finds himself standing beside a still pool of water reflecting a sea of stars, even though the sky above them remains empty. The woman stands by the pool’s edge and points at the surface of the water. She speaks no words and her expression is completely hidden by her shroud, but somehow, Yudrein knows exactly what she wants him to do. Something tugs at him, like an invisible string, a plea, a warning, he’s not sure which. He ignores it. Why shouldn't he? To be honest, he's not quite sure what will happen when he steps into that pool, but at this point, so close to the end and after all he’s suffered in the name of the greater good, he can no longer bring himself to worry about the consequences.
He wades into the pool, water rippling around his legs, immediately soaking through the fabric to his skin. Where it touches, the pain numbs and he feels stronger. By the time he stops in the centre of the pool, the water reaches his chest. Then, without even bothering to take a deep breath, he dunks his entire body beneath the surface.
Strange images flash before his eye (no it’s eyes, now, as he suddenly can see from what had previously been a gaping hole), too quickly for him to comprehend. His damaged core fills with a new power, taking the place of the lost one that had once made him an Awakener. It feels similar, yet wholly alien, swelling inside of him, growing so large he feels like he should burst. Instead, his body shift and change beneath this growing power. His skin takes on the same star speckled hue as the pool and expands, his body lengthens, fingers become claws, his face reforms itself into something completely different. Something draws taut and finally snaps, and his mind scatters with it. Out of the corner of his eyes, he can see the writhing forms of monsters, once terrifying and terrible, now oddly familiar. The last of his consciousness leaves in a burst of light and when the transformation stops, the pool and the woman are gone, leaving only the newly born calamity in its wake.
A faint pulse can be detected when the warden checks, but the prisoner’s one remaining eye stares fixedly into the distance and he shows no other response, no matter how much the warden shouts at or slaps him, as if his mind is already gone. The warden curses, trying to keep his panic under control. They all had received orders to make sure that this prisoner lived until his execution, no matter what is done to him, but while he’s technically alive, the warden isn’t sure the Emperor will appreciate the nuance. Last night he had seemed no more dead than any of the previous times they had dumped him back in his cell, so why… why did it have to be in his prison?!
No, no, it would be okay. The ‘trial’ and execution are supposed to be today; so long as the prisoner keeps breathing until then, it will be fine. It’s not like they are planning on giving the criminal a chance to defend himself, or even speak any final words, and with how broken his body looks, no one will bat an eye if he just goes quietly to his death.
To his relief, the Emperor doesn’t even show up to the trial, and everyone there is too busy sneering at the practical corpse the guards leave kneeling before the judge, to notice that anything’s off. After the judge rants for a bit and pronounces the sentence, that corpse is dragged outside to the carefully prepared guillotine. The crowd jeers when the guards toss him beneath the blade, flower petals filling the air in celebration. The blade falls and the warden sighs in relief…
… there’s another tug this time, though it feels different from before. A doorway opens in front of him and he steps through…
… except something is very, very wrong. The head falls into the basket, as expected, but instead of scarlet blood oozing from the stump, another strange dark liquid gushes out. The headless corpse twitches and splits and something rips its way through. Cheers freeze in everyone’s throats, horrified faces framed by flower petals frozen unnaturally in the air. The dark form that emerges shifts and grows, becoming a creature that towers over them, its body spilling off a platform that is too small to contain it. The guillotine wobbles and topples over, the thud as it hits the ground, finally snapping the crowd out of their daze. Someone starts screaming, then they all are, people turning and fleeing before the strange monster that somehow appeared in the centre of the capital...
...except, there’s nowhere left to run. The creature lashes its tail and a sharp gust of wind follows it, bowling over the Imperial guards who try to approach with swords in shaking hands. Overhead, the sunny sky darkens and hail, large as giant’s fists, begins to fall, smashing through everything equally, whether they be the roofs of buildings or people's skulls. The earth cracks and heaves beneath their feet and somewhere, a fire starts, quickly rising to an inferno despite the precipitation that still falls. The new Cavalry commander tries to direct his forces to deal with this sudden catastrophe, but even working together, their strength is no match for the disaster before them.
Then cracks begin to appear in the sky, spilling monsters onto the already terrified populace and it’s well and truly over.
The Emperor hides under his bed, praying for it all to go away. He’d confined himself to his bedroom during the trial, with a sickness that wasn’t entirely feigned, waiting for the cheers and the thunk of the blade outside to tell him that it was all over. And eventually, he’d heard both, but instead of heralding the end, they had only signalled the beginning. Or rather, it was the end, but a far more final one than he’d been expecting. Even before he made the mistake of glancing out the window following the sound of the first scream, he'd known that something had gone terribly, terribly wrong. The angle of his window doesn't allow him to see the stage, nor the strange monster that now stands on it, but he can see the other monsters just fine, along with the falling hail and burning fires.
Why are there so many monsters here?! He is in the palace, the capital city of the Empire, not some forsaken wilderness; the walls are supposed to keep him safe! When it first started, he’d screamed for his guards, but no one had answered his call, all too busy running out to deal with the monsters... or simply running away. So he’d hidden under the bed instead, not daring to move even as he feels the tremor of hail battering the palace walls and shattering roofs, smells the soot and ash from the fire scorching the outer walls, hears the sounds of people falling and dying outside.
He doesn't realize that something else enters the room until a tentacle seizes his right ankle, dragging him out from beneath the bed. Katchian’s hands franticly scrabble against the floor, breaking nails and leaving a thin bloody trail as he desperately tries to claw his way back to his flimsy hiding place.
“No, no, noooo!” The repeated scream quickly morphs into wordless shrieks as he’s lifted up and sees just how many teeth the owner of that tentacle has. Even so, it takes quite a few bites from those teeth before silence finally falls in the now bloodstained room.
Everything has gone quiet. The screaming has long since ended, the buildings finished crumbling, the fires burned down, the other monsters vanished. Perhaps there are survivors, but if there are, they’ve all long since fled. He remains, a bit uncertain of what to do now. He doesn’t remember why he’s here, but the burning rage that had been kindled within him, has gone quiet as well. With it gone, he feels empty inside, no not just empty, but mourning something lost. Grief leaves a pit inside of him, though he is not sure what he’s grieving. It can’t be those that had died, though, because he had brought that himself, but every time he thinks of them, he feels something stir inside. Grief? Guilt? Regret? Whatever it is, it’s unpleasant, so he stops thinking about it.
To bury those unwanted thoughts, he begins to wander, moving east, south, west, whatever direction happens to catch his attention in the moment. Whenever he reaches a populated area, the storms rise again, though now, they rage with a little less intensely, so that many are able to flee. The southern and western territories of the Empire are already quite damaged, but what remains, still falls. Eventually, it's only buildings that collapse, the towns before already completely evacuated, their citizens warned by the refugees of his previous visits. He doesn’t consciously destroy them; rather it seems as though he brings destruction with him, like an ominous raincloud.
He doesn’t wander past the Empire’s borders, unconsciously redirecting his feet when they reach those invisible lines. While all of the towns before him are empty, occasionally he still crosses paths with a few people, usually some band of overly brave or reckless fools who try to attack him, none of them living long enough to reflect upon their mistake. Some of those people come from the south beyond the Empire's borders, trying to claim the land, either by attacking him directly like the other fools, or slipping in behind the trail of his warpath, hoping that he will not return to ground already damaged. Unfortunately for them, the Empire’s vast lands are not so vast for him, and he cycles back to chase them off again.
Despite this, not everywhere faces the same destruction. The north remains mostly untouched, as does a section of the Rik Mountains. He doesn’t remember why he avoids them, just as he no longer remembers who he is, simply following a gut instinct. One year passes, then two, then five, and finally the fire burning within his belly begins to die. The citizens of the Empire are either dead or fled to other, safer havens, while the south has given up on infiltrating the borders. He no longer sees any people and with their absence, he starts to feel tired. His feet finally turn north, but unlike in the other territories, he avoids civilization, not stopping until he reaches an abandoned castle, one known to him, even if the reason why is lost. His body automatically shrinks as he reaches the walls, allowing him to crawl inside. He’s tired, so very tired; all he wants now, is to rest. He makes his way to the largest room and curls up inside, falling into an endless dream.
He dreams of mountains, of an old man and another with blond hair, though he can’t remember either of their faces. Of climbing trees and watching a building that houses people with black uniforms, of a worn bracelet of magic stones, and a discarded bloodied sword. Of flower petals dyed red with blood, and a sunny sky blotted out by heavy clouds. Centuries rise and fall, and people slowly make their way back to the land. Cities are rebuilt, populations re-grow. And still the creature dreams, waiting for spring to come.