Chapter 4: Day One

I felt myself fall deep into the void of my own, letting the pain and thoughts wash over me and consume every fiber of my existence. This was my fall and my rebirth, From the ashes so will arise a king. When I awake I feel dry all over my body. I push against the hot grains of bleached white sand. As I try to stand but the pain from the stab wound puts me back on the ground. As I'm laying on the hot sand waiting for the pain to cease, I feel around and find that the silk covered blade is beside me. Then I feel the warmth of the sun slowly being taken away from me like a cloud that engulfs the light and casts its shadow below. I look up to see a figure of a man wielding a large object. I am startled to see another person in this world. I stand up quickly and ask, "Who are you and what do you want?" The man has long dark hair and is wearing some kind of decorative armor, he says, "My name is Kairoma the sole guardian of the Niji, The Grand Centurion and I am your Aryune." "Aryune, what is that?", I ask. Kairoma states, "An Aryune is known as the second soul, I was sent here to protect you and guide you back from your fall." Then he kneels in front of me and says, "If I am going to become your Aryune we must make a soul bond." "Alright how do we do that?", I inquired. He says,"Put your left hand on my head and say these words, Aryune Sentrion." I say the words and he is consumed by a raging fire that turns him into a small floating flame that burns a deep blue like the center of a match, the flame passes into my left arm and the blue glyphs change and become more intricate. I start to hear him in my head. He says, "Good, The bond is complete. You now can call upon at anytime you need assistance and I will protect you even if you do not call upon me." I say, "Good, now tell me where the hell am I and how we get out of here?" He forms himself before me and says, "You are in the Outlands, a place where life and death have no control over this realm. There is no mortal that has ventured out of these lands, but you are no mortal, not any more. There is one path you can traverse, The Ghenna's Walkway. It's a 5 day journey but, days here are eight times longer and there is only 12 hours of light in a day, believe me you do not want to be caught outside when night falls." So we started to walk along the Walkway, and shortly the day turned into night. We rush to find shelter before the night envelopes us. Kairoma shouts, "Here, underneath this rock face!" I ran and as the sun sets beneath the horizon all the creatures of the night come flooding into the landscape around us like a tectonic shift that causes the eruption from deep within the plain that the pressure drives this superheated liquid darkness that looks likes that it's drenched in a mixture of human and parasitic sentience, like abomination of destruction itself. The event can rival untold devastation of what happened at Pompeii. The monsters fill not only the ground but also the sky.