Chapter Text
Yuuji walked down the dark winding trail in the forests behind the hospital. The path appears blurry and foggy. His breath shuddered in his chest, heaving and like he was being pressed down. He sobbed, finally noticing the tears running down his face. The cold wind was a biting chill against his flushed cheeks.
Once he deemed himself far enough away from the hospital, he let out a scream, a wail filled with all his sorrow and pain. It echoed through the air with a ghastly presence, like the cry of legends of old. The cry of those left behind.
Gasping, he pulled himself back into an upright posture, his tears felt like sharp shards of ice against his worn skin.
He was alone , all alone now.
The thought echoed through his mind like the chime of a bell in an abandoned temple, forlorn and pitiful, never to be answered. The thought settled into the depth of his mind like an anchor, weighing him down, bringing him to a standstill.
Yuuji looked up, the vast sky with all its many stars, was obscured from him by the fog. But the moon shone with its borrowed radiance, a hazy glow, from amidst the thick fog. Yuuji smiled, a mere twist of the lips with none of the joy. He was like the moon now. All alone in the dark, with no light of his own.
With his Grandfather dead, and his parents never part of the picture, he was all alone in this vast world, abandoned. He had spent the past five years looking after his grandfather, never had time to make friends or even acquaintances, no one would miss him or think of him. Is it really life, to live by himself, without another soul to think of him, to remember him?
Yuuji chuckled, pushing down these melancholy thoughts. He needed to clear his head, he was still expected to go back and make funeral arrangements for his Grandfather. There were still some duties left for him to fulfill. But for now, for just a few moments more, he wanted to express his grief, to not have the mask of a smile forced upon his face.
Yuuji wiped his tears, and stretched his limbs. He took a deep breath, the cool air rushed through him like an icy stream, making his mind clear out.
He began walking aimlessly, letting his feet take him wherever he pleased. He just needed a few more moments, a few more seconds to be free, before he painted a smile onto his face and continued to pretend.
He walked until the lights from the hospital became distant specks, until his fee began to ache due to the uneven terrain, until he felt his lungs burn with every breath. A sudden wing blew through the clearing he was currently crossing, the current made the fog swilr around in beautiful waves, pushing it away, to reveal a small gate.
Yuuji walked closer. The gate stood in the middle of the clearing, with two pillars on either side. The structure was barely waist high, Yuuji touched the gate. The iron was bitingly cold, yet seemed to glow with some innate heat. The wrought design was beautiful and archaic. The gate stood alone, untethered to anything else. The pillars stood by themselves, unattached.
Yuuji felt a small smile curling his lips. He reached out to the iron handle shaped like a dragon taking flight. His hands wound around it, it fit perfectly in his hands, the ridges and curves of the twisting dragon, mirroring the folds and calluses of his hands. He pulled the gate open, it moved smoothly, unhindered by any rust that should have been present on a gate abandoned in the mist.
Laughing, feeling a spark of childish glee, Yuuji stepped through the open gate. He stepped onto the other side, or perhaps stepped is too inaccurate a word. His feet seemed to pass through the darkness of the ground, the shadows swallowing the colors of his shoes.
He perhaps stepped through the ground, sinking and falling all at the same time.
Yuuji gasped, the handle suddenly too hot to hold onto. The metal burned into the soft skin of his palm, searing hot like a brand. Yuuji let go of it in a moment of incomprehensible pain, and then he fell.
The darkness engulfs him completely, he feels a chill on his skin, as if he is drowning into a well of black ink. Yuuji barely has a moment to gasp before a strange golden glow appears. It slowly takes from, concentrating and fading. It is emanating from somewhere beneath him, but Yuuji is unable to ascertain the distance between himself and the source of light.
It pulses with a strange sort of power, like the rays of the sun, everlasting, eternal and yet familiar. Yuuji finds himself suddenly sitting upon a vast glowing array. It has been carved into the marble floor and stretches out to at least a meter from the center.
He sits there, eyes wide in shock. Mind still reeling with the events of the past few minutes, he seems to be having trouble processing what had just occurred. He had stepped through a lonely gate in the middle of a foggy forest and had somehow fallen through the darkness to land in the middle of an array.
“Your Highness.”
The sudden words cause Yuuji’s head to shoot up. That is when he notices that he seems to be in a huge hall of some sort, it quite honestly looks like something out of the marvel movie “Thor”. With golden gilded pillars and huge arches heavy with silken cloth, the resemblance was acute. However, the most shocking sight was the numerous, seven feet tall humanoid figures surrounding him.
Yuuji feels his heart start beating a fearful staccato within his chest. A chill feeling of dread dripped down his spine. His breath coming is short and rapid huffs.
He looked around him, noticing the various figures. They were humanoid in the vaguest sense. The most normal looking was perhaps a slight figure with greyish skin and stitches all across their hands and face. Another had steam and lava streaming out of the volcano ? on its head. Still Another seemed to eb entire made of roots and bark, with eyes made of flowers on their stalks.
Each figure seemed more bizarre than the last. But the one occupying the cast throne seemed to be the most powerful and mystical of them all. The one on the throne had a body shaped like a sculpture, muscles bulging and defined like it had been cut out of stone. He had four arms, with palms the size of Yuuji’s face. One hand held onto a huge sceptre, the other casually placed on his knee. His abdomen was marred by a huge horizontal scar, and seemed to slightly gape open, revealing a sharp glint of teeth ?
His body was adorned with bold and symmetrical tattoos. His face was perfectly normal on the left, save for an extra eye. However, the right side of his face was grotesquely marred. There seemed to be a plate of wood, or perhaps scarred skin with two eyes placed vertically.
Yuuji felt his heart crawl up to his throat, his skin breaking out in shivers. He was filled with a deeply seated primal fear. The fear of a rabbit in the presence of a great predator.
The same voice from before spoke from the shadows of the throne.
“Your Highness, This is your fated Bride. The One assigned by the stars. The One to bear your heir and lead our world into an era of peace and fortune heretofore untold.”
The Being on the throne nodded and seemed to appraise Yuuji at these words. He rose from the seat, his shadow loomed over Yuuji. inclining his head he took a step down the elevated throne, a step closer to Yuuji.
That was the last thing Yuuji saw, it seemed his body had reached its threshold for inexplicable things. He fainted right onto the array.