Author note: Read with caution. This chapter might feel heavy or might not, but I just want to give you guys a heads up. Anyway, I would appreciate any criticism.
***
A shimmer stirred out of his broken body, and a silver, translucent barrier arced into existence around him.
A strange Light erupted from him, blackish-green, pulsing with hues of multiple colors, the light wrapping him in a cocoon.
Within the cocoon, his chest jerked. Air rushed into his lungs. Breath returned, slow and rhythmic.
His heartbeat thundered again, no longer weak but resurgent, pulsing with vitality.
The light did not stop at restoring his breath. It poured through his wounds, stitching flesh, sealing cuts, and forcing bones back into place. His mangled face smoothed, features realigning as though sculpted anew.
The radiance swelled.
The strange light with multiple colors not only restores his heartbeat and his broken body, but it is also doing something else to his body. The restored body shone dazzling and ethereal under the strange light, and cracks started to appear on his body.
Then came….
agony,
GHASTLY AGONY,
Thalen's smooth, dark hair withered and fell away. Nails crumbled into dust. His blood boiling, his bones twisting until they snap, skin tearing, flesh rending apart as though unmade by unseen hands.
Thalen's conscience returned, but greeted him was the torture.
Under the barrage of assailing pain, he wanted to scream out loud, and he did scream, like a roar that can tear the skies, but the strange silver barrier concealed all his suffering from the outside world. And the pain was so unfathomable that his mind was unable to process it. In addition, he couldn't hear or see, from the loss of his senses, but the intensity of anguish and despair hit him without missing a beat. This only magnified and multiplied to a degree that is impossible to bear. He is overwhelmed, he is suffocating in torment that feels endless.
His body, tearing, breaking, and burning into nothingness.
His consciousness threatened to slip away to nothingness, but the strange and surreal light held his consciousness firmly, letting him bear every ounce of it, like a curse cast on him by a being that can only be called or fathomed as a GOD.
The clarity that had begged to slip away from him because of the horrifying intensity of the anguish ordeal returned seamlessly, and the clarity he had begged to gain for the past few days struck him like a divine curse. Every nerve blazed, every fiber screamed.
He pleaded, begged, roared for the torment to end.
"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
The barrier contained his agony with ease. To any who might stumble upon this, Theo would only seem like a boy resting in peaceful slumber, his chest rising as though untouched by pain.
No eye could pierce the silver veil, and no sense could grasp the storm inside. Even the wild energy surging within, force enough to chill the air, all over the world, was smothered, hidden away.
Within the barrier, a strange, colored cocoon around Theo's body formed by the ethereal Blackish-green light and multiple different hues of colors. Pulsed in a divine rhythm, if witnessed, the rhythm could turn even an Imperion ranker mad beyond saving.
The rhythm was so sacred that even the silver translucent barrier hummed in blissful joy. As a child cradled in a mother's warmth.
But Theo felt something entirely different. Until now, the assailing anguish ordeal was only physical, but now it was a spiritual ordeal. He felt as if his entire being, even his soul, was under the assault of something unfathomable and primeval.
The ordeal continued for an uncertain amount of time, and his consciousness, which was held firmly by the strange light, the blackish green light danced around his consciousness, and a flicker of an unusual energy erupted and consumed his consciousness whole.
***
Hot winds mixed with a metallic and foul odor consumed the ruined planet whole. Every corner of the planet was dyed in red and colossal ruin, mutated flesh, broken bones, charred bodies of humans, beasts, monsters, and something alien lay breathless everywhere. The west, where beasts reside, the east, where humans reside, and even the north and south were where monsters from the dark veil reside. Every one of them lay breathless.
No voice of a living being escaped the red mist.
The land was carved and shaped into valleys of corpses. Mountains of the dead towered like grotesque monuments.
A river of blood, thick, hot, metallic, cut its way through the corpse-fields, swollen with men, beasts, and broken armor.
The air reeked of rust and rot.
Silence pressed down, heavy, absolute.
It was the silence of death, louder than any scream.
Then, at a certain location on the planet,
BOOM.
BOOM.
The land trembled. Fractures split open even more. The mountains of corpses shifted, avalanches of bodies spilling into the river of blood.
Three figures had appeared. Their battle ripped through the silence, every strike shaking the earth raw.
Then,
From within the river of blood, A man in his mid or late twenties, half submerged in blood and ruin, a pair of bloodied hazel eyes flickered open slowly. Blurred, broken, they locked onto the chaos around.
"..."
"..."
"..."
The man trembled in shock, fear, and, demanding an uncertain hope, he tried to speak, but his voice refused to slip out of his mouth. The trembling didn't stop, it hadn't eased, and his heart refused to accept the chaos, and it didn't stop demanding hope.
His soaked body in the blood felt utterly revolting to him. The blood and the metallic rustic odor were like companions that he didn't want to be with, but fate never gave a choice to anyone, and he wasn't different either. The blood and red mist carrying the metal rustic foul odor around him was the undeniable evidence.
Then the land trembled again, and the blood pool threatened to submerge him whole. He looked around in search of land, but all he saw was floating corpses and the mountains made of corpses. With no choice, he desperately held on with his near broken body and reached near a corpse mountain and climbed enough to come out of the sea of blood.
The land trembled again, and a bunch of corpses from the top slowly rolled over to him.
'FUCK' he cursed out internally, and tried to avoid them, but he saw a face that nearly shattered his mind.
'Reuel'
Straining his broken muscles, he had leaped over to reach the corpse of his dear friend, but before he could stop its descent, the corpse had fallen into the ocean of blood.
'No, no, no, no, no, no, no...' he was devastated.
He wanted to reach him desperately, but the body had already fallen into the red ocean.
The growing tremble hadn't stopped, prompting him to turn to his right, and miles away from him in the crimson sky, he saw large flashes of familiar blue and purple flame wrestling against a black energy.
'William'
Then he saw a huge mass of blood coiled and twisted into a large number of spears that spanned for miles, covering half of the sky. He saw that each blood spear was connected by blades of threads formed by the very blood of dead masses flowing around. It formed a net.
The net of spears descended from the sky and assaulted the black, destructive energy.
Sending shockwaves throughout the planet.
BOOM.
BOOM.
BOOM.
The scale of destruction only magnified as seconds passed, and the man, who was seeing the volume of this destruction, only made it impossible to control his trembling mind even more, cause even after being attacked by the bluish purple flame and the huge net formed by the blades made of blood, the black destructive energy remained as destructive as it was moments ago.
The man breathed harder and tried to control the emotion of FEAR dancing joyfully in him.
He, as a man who had reached the pinnacle of power, Imperian rank, a stage only a few had ever managed to reach in this ruined planet, but...
Is there a meaning to this power he held?
He had utterly failed to save his only dear friend,
What did this power he had reached even give him now?
FEAR
He felt unfathomable fear when he looked at the black energy.
As he tried to control himself, his eyes flickered, and an insignia painted in blood clung to his torn garment, catching his eye. Even with destruction around, the insignia was in fairly good condition.
It was made of a rare magical ore, and an old man's face was inscribed on it, whom he recognised promptly. It was his own badge. It was his house, Isgima. Seeing the isgima, the images of his father, his mother, and his brother, even one bastard friend, surfaced in his mind, which moments ago, had consumed him with fear.
Family,
Seeing the destruction around, he understood the chances of his family's survival were near zero.
Family?
No, the man had stopped seeing them as his family.