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Prologue
"To think that all this time, I had been too blind to see the truth, that the real enemy, the one I should have feared the most had been the person closest to me."
Inside a tiny, cluttered, and stinky apartment, a somewhat frail, unkempt, and despondent twenty-seven-year-old young man, who was slumped limply on a wheelchair muttered to himself, his voice coarse and laden with unbearable agony.
"All these years, I had convinced myself that fate had shown me mercy once more, sending someone to fill the void left by my mother and Aurelia." he went on, sniffing deeply, doing his best to hold back the tears threatening to spill from his crimson, blood-red eyes.
Eventually, Xylen inhaled a sharp breath, one seemingly filled with countless painful and regretful emotions, before lowering his head.
His gaze locked onto the knife resting on the ground, its sharp, pointy blade pointing skyward as though wanting to pierce through it.
Xylen fixated his gaze on this knife for what felt like an eternity before finally:
"What's left to live for now?" he murmured to himself quietly, almost inaudibly, and chuckled bitterly.
"I have lost everything anyway. Even my only chance of surviving from now on," he added.
With this, Xylen released an emotional sigh again before using his weight to propel himself to the edge of his wheelchair and halted just as he was about to fall, his eyes resting on the framed pictures of the strikingly beautiful women on the wall… one middle-aged, and the other barely in her twenties.
He stared at these pictures for a moment that felt like forever, genuine love, apology, and tenderness flashing in his eyes before finally:
"Apologizing to the souls of you both now is already far too late. However, if by any chance, the heavens decided to grant me another opportunity, I swear by heaven and my soul that I will make it up to you," he uttered tearfully, gritting his teeth against each other as though to use them to hold his emotions in check.
Then he closed his eyes and… without further hesitation, gave the final push forward before letting gravity take over the rest.
Without pause, he toppled over, his chest landing directly on top of the blade and then—piu.
It pierced through Xylen's heart, a crimson pool gushing forth like a fountain from the wound, slowly spreading across the floor.
An excruciating pain followed after a second.
But just as death was about to claim its due, a solitary vow formed in Xylen's mind: 'I will also avenge those wretched fiends and evil scums, making them wish they had never gone against us if I'm ever given another chance in life.'
This pledge seemed like a continuation of the first, and with that, he ceased breathing, the room returning to a deafening silence.
For a moment, nothing moved, instead, the room continued remaining peaceful until suddenly;
"Hmmm!"
A deep, sonorous sigh, sounding as though the owner had seen through the vicissitude of life itself sounded, ringing from nowhere and everywhere at the same time.
Had Xylen still been alive, he would have been shocked out of his soul, because he had been the sole entity living in this room for a month now, however, since he had already died, no one was available to hear.
Again, the room returned to silence when again;
"You did not deserve what you have gotten," the voice echoed again, sounding like that of a deity, calm, unhurried, and filled with power.
Following this, as though a magical show, a ball of blue light suddenly flashed out of Xylen's carcass, suspending in the air for a moment before finally, as though summoned by another realm, it flashed forward and disappeared into the space, leaving behind no traces.