To Ashes And Blood

“I'm not here because I'm brave. I'm not here because I'm strong….”

The air was filled with voices of people wailing with immense pain in their voice as the city behind Damien C. Valdona burned.

Ash and sparks filled the crimson sky like snow. It covered broken towers, the mother ship and bodies that littered the streets below. Somewhere in the distance a loud bang erupts as another section of Aragon collapses into the sea.

Damien stood alone at the edge of the ruined bridge.

Blood ran down his fractured left arm in faint lines, dripping from his fingertips into the sea beneath him. Half of his armour jacket has been torn. His old scars across his shoulder and back were exposed to the bloodied moon.

The sky above him suddenly became hot as the clouds around him shifted like an enormous wind had just been blown through it followed by a low distorted cry.

A low exhausted voice came from his side “The king is beginning to regain his strength”

Her badge was yellow. “S-Rank Sypher” Damien thought to himself as he marched forward with his hands trembling by his side.

Then came the sound again but this time it was a loud distorted cry.

Out of exhaustion, Damien closed his eyes. Doing away with whatever iota of fear that was in him.

Behind him, he could hear the roaring engines of the evacuation pods soaring into the atmosphere. Thousands of people clamored against the steel doors, scrambling for evacuation pods without looking at the bridge.

No one would remember him, no one had ever cared for him. His trembling fingers tightened around the cracked blade in his hand. Then suddenly his lips curled slowly into a lazy smile that exposed his blood stained teeth. It suddenly shifted into a laughter that came out as ragged and quiet then louder beyond his control. A laugh that had no warmth in it, just the raw, hollow sound of a man who had finally understood the joke, and hated that it was him.

He grew up as a child blamed for his parents suffering, he was built into a soldier that was used when convenient and now a D-Rank combatant who people only remembered when they needed another body to drag into hell.

The bridge trembled violently.

Something massive moved beneath the fog ahead.

As it approached, buildings bent sideways and concrete turned to ash. The darkness split open and the King emerged.

Its body stretched high into the clouds, wrapped in constantly shifting black matter and fragments of ruins. Thousand of pale human faces pulsed under its skin, each appearing and disappearing in agony.

This was the catastrophe of the world. The Hollow King.

Damien felt his knees weaken instantly. He knew humanity had already lost but far below the bridge, soldiers fired rounds into the surrounding hollows flooding the ship.

One of them was a red-haired sniper desperately trying to pull civilians into cover despite her shaking hands.

Another was a massive underground fighter laughing while punching a Hollow hard enough to crack its skull apart.

Further away, hidden among collapsed train cars, a blonde-haired girl watched silently through frightened blue eyes as armed guards searched for her.

The ocean split as the Hollow King took another step. An entire district vanished, the surrounding soldiers turned into ashes.

Damien exhaled slowly, then he raised his blade.

Dark veins spread across his arm immediately. A wave of pain hit him almost immediately.

It felt like molten glass crawling under his skin.

“...I'm here because nobody came to save me either…” Damien whispered amidst the pain.

For the first time, the Hollow King stopped moving and shifted its attention to Damien on the bridge.

“C.” it muttered in a distorted voice before letting out a roar whose pressure shattered the remaining buildings nearby.

Damien’s body trembled violently. His mind was filled with flashbacks of lonely dinners, skipping training sessions, watching other children get picked by their parents from the academy and risking his life over again for people who never knew his name.

His eyes burned.

“…and I learned to live with that…”

The veins reached his neck now. Black blood spilled from his mouth.

Somewhere behind him, a child screamed aboard one of the departing pods.

The wind carried the sound through the burning air.

Damien smiled weakly.

Then he looked directly at the monster standing before mankind.

“.....Can you?”

The world went white.

For a split second, everything stopped. The waves froze. Ash halted midair. The Hollow King that was approaching him began to break into tiny pieces

Damien’s body began breaking apart. Cracks spread across his skin like shattered porcelain as light erupted from inside him.

The bridge disintegrated instantly. For the first time since the apocalypse began, the Hollow King let out it's first true scream. A scream that was stripped of the weight it once had.

Damien could feel himself disappearing.

His heartbeat became slow, his memories became loose one after the other but through his fading vision, he saw something impossible.

The Hollow King locked eyes with him in a strange way. He didn't feel rage from it, he felt recognized for the first time in his life.

“C. Valdona”

His eyes widened. How did it know his name?

In an instant, the light swallowed everything.

A cold heavy darkness fell upon Damien.

…

…

Damien inhaled sharply as his eyes snapped open. He woke up to the sound of rain tapping softly against glass.

He glanced around as his heartbeat increased.

The ceiling above him was familiar. A tiny crack sat in the upper left corner exactly where he remembered it. To the side was his uniform.

His chest tightened violently.

Slowly, Damien turned toward the calendar hanging beside his bed.

YEAR 2055.

Two years before the fall of Aragon.

His breathing stopped.

Outside, distant sirens echoed through the sleeping city.

He could feel a thumping underneath the surface of the earth and somewhere far beneath the Crimson City, something flung its eye open.