Screams.
Silent sobs.
Whispers, half-formed and guttural, slithered through the air like insects nesting in his ears. They didn't belong to anyone anymore—no face, no soul—just the residue of those who had fallen. In that broken world, he was alone.
Utterly alone.
Everyone… was gone.
The echoes didn't stop. They seeped into his bones, murmuring things he couldn't forget, wouldn't unfeel. And then, suddenly—he wasn't alone. Not quite. Around him, shadows formed into children. His age. Their faces hollowed by grief, smeared in dried tears and ash. A procession of the forgotten. They walked northward, barefoot on a road of soot and shattered memories, their cries stitched together in a symphony of mourning.
And without understanding how, he was among them.
Sobbing.
Wailing.
Each step forward tore open wounds he thought had scarred over. Every breath was a battle between despair and memory. Tragedy, once dulled by time, returned with venom. He remembered everything.
The ruin.
The corpses.
The silence that followed.
And then… her.
Elara.
Her death was the final stone, the cruel punctuation to his already broken tale.
He had barely healed from his parents' demise. Barely learned to stand without shaking. He clung to his father's cold survival teachings—detached wisdom carved into him like a brand. Through pain, he lived. Through discipline, he pretended to be whole. For a time, he had walked like a child again. Laughed, if hollowly. Loved, in pieces.
Then, the gods laughed. And took her.
Now—he walked with the dead.
They approached a lake. Serene. Unmoving.
Its surface was unnaturally placid, a mirror reflecting the bruised, churning heavens above. The sky was a canvas of bruised purples and suffocating blacks, perpetually overcast. Yet, piercing this oppressive gloom was a singular point of luminescence: a perfect, ethereal white sphere hanging suspended in the void.
The moon.
He had never seen it—only heard whispers from his mother's old bedtime stories. A glowing goddess that watched over them. A myth. A lie. Yet now, it floated above the lake like an eye of mercy in a world that had none.
The children ahead walked into the water.
Without resistance.
Without question.
And vanished.
He followed. Water lapped at his ankles, cold as the void, then thighs. The surface stilled behind them, like glass closing over graves. He walked deeper. Crying. Wailing. The sound no longer his own but part of the collective sorrow, a shared torment bound to that cursed place.
And then—
The water thickened.
It no longer flowed—it clung, its viscosity growing unnatural. Each step was like wading through warm syrup, and the sobs around him evolved—sorrow curling into screams. Human voices stretched into something else. The lake turned crimson. The moon's reflection shimmered on the blood's surface, distorted and wrong.
His tears turned red. Everyone's did.
The warmth was no comfort—it was the warmth of something dying.
Blood reached his chest. Then his neck.
Still, he walked.
And then… it shifted.
Memories flooded in—too vivid, too real.
Pleasant ones.
Hope.
He was back in his childhood home. The walls were dim, fog-draped, but familiar. The aroma of food filled the air, warm and sweet, carrying a nostalgic undertone that wrapped around him like a blanket. He was three again—small, innocent, unaware of the horrors that would one day eat his world.
A bell wrapped around his wrist jingled faintly as he moved. He walked with perfect clarity, voice strong despite his tiny form. "Mama?"
"I'm in the kitchen, sweetheart," came the answer. Melodic. Kind.
She appeared like a ghost made whole—jade-toned skin, serene blue eyes like still lakes, her long dark hair tied back beneath a soft, traditional kimono. She knelt and kissed him, warm lips pressing against his forehead.
"My little star, you're hungry, aren't you?"
She lifted him into her arms, humming gently. Hmm-hmm-hmm… A lullaby carved from forgotten dreams. The kitchen flickered with shadow-light but smelled like home. Sweet, spiced, foreign.
He peeked at the pot she stirred—black and oily. The kind of stew that shimmered unnaturally. Yet it smelled so… comforting.
But something was off.
No ingredients.
Nothing around her.
Still, she stirred, her hand too graceful, her nails too perfect—long, curved, sharp like ornamental blades. The hum changed. Slightly. Sour, off-tune.
Hmm-hhm… hrrrrmmm…
Then came the tearing sound.
Subtle. Wet.
He turned.
His mother's face smiled.
And with calm, mechanical grace—she dug two fingers beneath her left cheek and tore.
A strip of her own jade skin came away easily, the flesh beneath pale and glistening. She held it for a moment, still smiling, before dropping it into the simmering black stew.
Her hand moved again, fingers reaching towards her left eye with the precision of adjusting a precious jewel. A gentle push, a faint squelch of separation, and the blue orb came free. She held it aloft briefly, then she dropped the eye into the stew.
It hissed.
The spoon resumed its slow dance inside the dark liquid.
He froze.
Her grip around him tightened—no longer maternal, but possessive. He looked up, and dread choked him.
One side of her face remained perfect, serene, the loving mother from his memory.
The other half was… rot.
Peeled. Oozing. Fetid.
Muscle pulsed beneath strips of sloughing skin. Teeth were exposed where there should have been cheeks. One of her sockets was now a crimson nest, the other eye hanging loosely by threads.
And she smiled.
Not lovingly.
But with a ravenous hunger.
Their gazes met.
Kuro's breath stilled.
She leaned close.
And in a whisper of flesh against flesh, her mouth opened—
Too wide.
Far too wide.
"Kuro…" The name hissed out, not in her voice alone, but layered, dozens of whispering, grating undertones slithering beneath the familiar melody.
The kitchen walls seemed to pulse and warp around them. The tiny bell on his wrist trembled violently.
And then the humming returned—
Hrrmm-hrrmm-hmm...
Hrrmm-hrrmm-hmm...
Her arms wrapped tighter. Not motherly. Not human. A cage of flesh.
Her jaw unhinged like a beast born beneath the world, tendons snapping like violin strings.
The humming grew louder. Wronger. Twisting into a choir of moaning things.
And then—
It ate him.
Not quickly. Not cleanly.
Piece by piece, memory by memory.
Love, grief, hope—consumed first.
Until all that remained was the bell, echoing hollow against the dark.