1 The Boy's Dream

The brown-haired boy closed his eyes to hide the horrors he had witnessed. But he soon opened them again, as being there in the darkness was equally terrifying, and he was horrified once more by the sight.

It was a very dark night, as countless red-tinged clouds obscured the view of the sky. Sometimes, there was light when spiral-shaped lightning appeared on the nearby horizon, accompanied by thunder that roared with such fury that the world's firmament could collapse over that plain at any moment. The swift winds carried not only a cold chill but also a foul smell that corroded the boy's nostrils like poison. It was the unmistakable smell of death.

But that wasn't the part that frightened him the most. Definitely not. After all, the boy found himself in the midst of a repugnant scene, where countless bodies lay strewn across the entire plain, forming a scene of horror. He saw soldiers felled by magic, mages impaled by spears, nobles hanged from trees, and old priests decapitated. People of all classes and races, without distinction. Not even children and women were spared from that diabolical slaughter; their bodies were mutilated by swords, pierced by arrows, or subjected to even crueler fates at the hands of someone.

But by whom?

There were no signs of who could have done this. He only knew that there had been an inhuman battle, and everyone had their lives mercilessly extinguished. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of people were piled on top of each other, as if they were slaughtered animals left to rot there. Who could be so cruel? And why did they die? What were their crimes to meet such a cruel fate? The boy wondered.

This scene seemed to stretch on forever, as far as his eyes could see. So he rubbed his eyes, already wanting to cry. Was there no one left alive in this world? He didn't want to believe this was real and continued to cry out for help. However, he only heard his own voice, with no response coming back.

What kind of dream was he in? After all, this could only be a dream.

"Is anyone there?" As he spoke, he looked in all directions and saw only corpses upon corpses. "Is anyone alive? Please, someone say something..."

The silence was oppressive. Even worse was seeing those dead people with expressions of pain and agony frozen on their faces. It pierced the boy's soul. Another thought came to his mind, that some of them could be acquaintances, friends, or even his father. So he closed his eyes in fear of finding the answer, but the putrid smell still alerted his senses. He tried to run away from there, but there seemed to be nothing around him except corpses and destruction. So he grew tired and fell to his knees, surrendering to tears.

"Do you want to know?"

"Who's there?" The boy looked up because it was a voice coming from above. There, standing on a pile of bodies as if it were the most natural thing, he managed to catch a glimpse of a silhouette hidden by the darkness when lightning flashed across the sky. "Hey, you..."

"This is the world now. The world you created," said the stranger.

He seemed young. It was hard to tell because, in addition to the darkness, a black cloak covered his entire body, and an iron mask concealed his face. The boy could only see a pair of golden eyes behind the mask, staring in his direction without a trace of humanity.

At first, the boy was frightened by the arrival of the masked figure. He could be the reason why everyone was dead. Then, as he looked at him for a while longer, he felt a faint sense of familiarity. But what he really wanted was to understand this strange nightmare—or was it not a nightmare?—from which he couldn't seem to wake up.

"Hey, please... help me... What?" He was surprised because the masked person simply disappeared before his eyes. And no matter how many lightning flashes illuminated the clouds, there was no one there anymore. "Hey, don't leave me here alone! Please..."

Then the brown-haired boy felt alone and desolate again.

"The world I created?" whispering the words the masked figure had spoken to him, he looked at his hands and saw red stains. Was it someone's blood? When did this happen? His eyes then noticed a golden glow near his feet; there lay a sword on the damp grass, as beautiful and gleaming as pure gold, but its blade was also stained with blood. "It can't be... did I do this?"

Did he kill some of those people? But he was just a small boy; he couldn't have done that, right? Then he looked at the golden sword again, and gray and golden smoke began to emanate from it. The sword was calling to him, he could feel it, for some reason he couldn't comprehend.

"Master, they are coming."

Suddenly, an unknown female voice — though it seemed familiar at that moment — echoed in his mind.

"What? Who are you?" He became even more confused, but soon most of the corpses began to rise from the ground, stiff and ungainly as if they were mere marionettes in the hands of an inexperienced puppeteer. From their mouths came eerie cries and moans. Something was happening to them, something very bad, the brown-haired boy thought.

Suddenly, the eyes of the corpses filled with the same golden glow as the masked figure's. Then, one by one, they moved toward the boy, shuffling with murmurs that sounded more like deep laments.

"Why did you do this to me?" It was the high-pitched, resentful voice of a woman's corpse. Other dead bodies asked the same question to the boy.

"Why did you kill me? Weren't we on the same side, weren't we?" asked the corpse of a soldier dressed in armor. "We were allies, and yet look what you did to me..." He bent down to pick up a sword from the ground.

"I was so young... I didn't want to die..." murmured the corpse of a young man. He extended his palm toward the heavens, and a red-toned magical circle appeared above it, along with a ball of fire of the same color. "I don't want to live in this hell anymore..."

In addition to the young man, an army of dead mages was approaching. He had never seen anything so terrifying, not even in his strangest nightmares.

"It's your fault, little brother... my chest aches because of you," said a boy as he stood up from the ground. There was a huge sword pierced through his chest; it was the gruesome way he had died. Then the boy used both hands and a little force to remove the sword from his body and carried it as if it were his own weapon. "You need to pay for what you did to me..."

The brown-haired boy screamed for them all to stop and closed his eyes. He was in a panic, unable to even run away. When he looked again, the boy was already advancing toward him, with a cut over the spot where his heart should be and the sword in his hands, ready to use it.

"Stay away! Don't come near me!"

"Give us back our lives!"

They all repeated the same phrase like a mantra as they advanced toward the boy with great fury. Desperate, he tried to escape, but, without realizing it, he ended up surrounded by the corpses. Now, escaping from there seemed impossible. Faced with this, despair grew within him, his body wouldn't stop trembling, his hands were weak, and his legs became paralyzed.

If this was another one of his nightmares, it should end at that moment, the boy thought. And he begged for it to happen.

But it didn't happen…