Oldred stepped forward,get swallowed by the darkness whole. The relentless rain was his only companion, while his cold bionic arm felt its way along the damp brick walls, a blind compass in the labyrinth of the dead city.
Strange. The feeling crept beneath his skin like an insect. He felt watched. Not by human eyes, but by the city itself. The dark alleys felt like thousands of empty eye sockets, judging him in silence. The broken windows of buildings, hunched like giant skeletons, whispered as the wind passed through them, calling out names he had long tried to bury.
"Oldred..." a voice whispered, full of fear.
"Dracula..." another hissed, full of hatred.
"God of War..." a voice echoed.
"Blind Dog..." sneered the voice he knew best, the one from within himself.
This ghostly choir swirled inside his head, mocking, worshipping, insulting, and judging him all at once... The voices of his victims and comrades merged into one. But he didn't care. His steady steps continued forward, unwavering. All those sounds were just the background noise of his personal hell, an accompanying score that had become part of his very heartbeat.
Suddenly, something impossible pierced the noise. A melody that dripped like crystal tears. The sweet, clear sound of a piano flowed from the distance, so real that it seemed to part the curtain of rain and muffle the fury of the thunder. Was he just hallucinating from exhaustion and hunger? No. This sound was too alive, too full of feeling.
And with that piano melody, the world around him trembled and changed. As if a giant hand had flipped a cosmic switch. The roar of the rain faded, replaced by the hiss of a furnace. The lightning vanished, replaced by a pale, sickly sunlight that pierced a sky choked with coal smoke. People suddenly appeared all around him, bustling about in a monotonous and horrifying routine.
Heavy footsteps thudded on the street, "thump-thump-thump," passing Oldred as if he were invisible. The metallic smell of fresh blood mixed with the sharp scent of burning coal and the stench of decaying corpses. On a street corner, a gaunt man dragged a heavy burlap sack, leaving a wet trail on the ground. "Shhh... shhh..." The dragging sound was punctuated by his deep, dry cough. "Cough-cough!"
Workers with hollow-faced and empty gazes walked like living zombies, dragging the bodies of their less fortunate comrades. On the other side, Rans Augumm soldiers in their arrogant black uniforms stood like haughty statues, commanding with waves of their hands and barks. This was an atmosphere so familiar to him, a symphony of death he had once composed. But the piano melody still played, so clear and untainted, a jasmine flower growing on a mass grave. No other sound was more real to him.
"Uzha..."
A voice called to him, not from the crowd, but directly into his soul. Gentle, like a silk thread pulling him from his lost state.
Among the gray crowd, his eyes caught a flash of color. A shock of flaming red hair he knew better than his own breath. Without thinking, he shot forward, a guided missile locked on its target. He couldn't see the figure's face, only her back and her flowing red hair, but he knew... he wanted her more than anything.
"Uzha..." the voice called again, closer now.
He shoved people aside roughly, ignoring their confused glares and curses. His world narrowed, there was only him and that red point in the distance.
Oldred: "Polgha, wait for me!"
He almost reached her. The figure, the anchor of his remaining sanity, was for some reason so important to him. He reached out his hand, his fingers about to touch the fabric on the woman's shoulder, before—
"CAW! CAW! CAW!"
A jet-black tornado erupted before his eyes. A countless flock of crows swarmed from all directions, obscuring his vision in a storm of black feathers and sharp beaks. By the time he managed to wave them away with his arm, the world had returned to what it was. Pitch black. The silence where Polgha had stood was now more deafening than any thunder. The pungent smell and the punishing rain were the only reality. Damn it. That was just plain cruel.
Oldred: "..."
He stood frozen in the middle of the street, his hand still outstretched toward the emptiness. A thousand curses and questions were stuck in his throat, unable to be spoken. What in the world had just happened? Had he truly gone mad?
Oldred: "I... I've gone mad, haven't I?"
He said it in a hoarse whisper. Perhaps it wasn't a question. Perhaps it was a realization he was finally admitting to. He lifted his heavy head and only then realized he had arrived. He was standing right in front of the brightly lit building, a small island of life in a sea of death.
Oldred: "This... this is my home..."
The admission came out in a tone of disbelief. Before he could process the absurdity of it all, a soft laugh was heard from inside, as melodious as the clinking of crystal glasses.
???: "Hehehe~... Please do knock first, before entering someone's house~"
The voice was elegant, a little teasing, like a gracious hostess welcoming a long-awaited guest. Who, or what, awaited him behind that familiar, yet now so foreign, door?.