In the shadowy depths of the night, a blood-red mist ascended from the earth, carrying with it the acrid stench of scorched flesh.
The anguished cries of people echoed through the forest, their wails reverberating across the land.
A monstrous figure—no, a man—dragged another man whose entrails trailed grotesquely across the grass.
With a brutal, savage expression, the man hurled the lifeless body onto a growing pile of the dead.
Anik knelt on the ground, fists clenched tightly, his small body marked with bloodstains and bruises.
His eyes, filled with defeat, stared at the man before him.
Tears streamed down his face as he cried and wailed, yet there was no trace of regret in his expression—
—only pain and despair.
"Live…"
It was the final word Anik heard from his father before witnessing his beheading.
A burly man, his body covered in strange, unrecognizable tattoos, stood over Anik with a mocking grin.
As his father's blood splattered across Anik's face, trembling with rage and grief, hurled a fistful of sand into the beheader's eyes.
With weak, unsteady legs, he forced himself up and lunged at the momentarily blinded man.
Grabbing his father's fallen knife, Anik slashed it across the man's neck.
The tattooed man, his eyes now bloodshot, clutched at his throat, yet his lips curled into a smile, as though death was the ultimate mercy he had longed for.
With a heavy thud, the man collapsed.
Anik stood there, breathing raggedly, his small frame trembling.
He gazed up at the fiery, burning sky and let out a hollow smile.
Kneeling, he stared at the bloodied knife in his hand.
A dark thought crept into his mind—
—to end his own life, to escape the unbearable pain of being alone.
But his father's last word, "Live," echoed relentlessly in his ears, a haunting reminder that stayed his hand and kept the blade from his throat.
"Live…"
Anik whispered his father's final word, his voice trembling with despair.
"Tell me, father, how can I live alone? Should I abandon everything—my name, my humanity—just to survive?"
His eyes swept across the horrifying scene before him.
His tribesmen were being dragged like animals, women were being violated in front of their helpless husbands, and children were being slaughtered without mercy.
The air was thick with the stench of blood and the sounds of suffering.
A dark resolve hardened within him.
His small hands clenched into fists, his tears drying as a cold, unyielding determination took hold.
"If becoming a beast is what it takes to survive," he thought, his heart turning to stone,
"then so be it."
In that moment, Anik innocence was extinguished, replaced by a fierce will to endure, no matter the cost.
In a world consumed by chaos, where the lines between normalcy and madness blurred, the kneeling child became an anomaly.
Some of the raiders glanced at him with fleeting curiosity, their eyes narrowing in confusion.
Yet, in this twisted reality, his stillness was so abnormal that it was, paradoxically, accepted as normal.
To them, he was just another fleeting spectacle in the carnage—a momentary pause in their rampage.
They didn't care what the child did.
His existence was insignificant, a trivial detail in their grand design of destruction.
For now, they allowed him to live, not out of mercy, but because his presence amused them, adding a strange flavor to their enjoyment.
But their indulgence was fleeting, bound by time.
Once their allotted moment of pleasure expired, they would return to their true purpose: enslaving other tribes, expanding their power, and feeding the insatiable hunger of their own kind.
Anik, kneeling amidst the chaos, was nothing more than a brief distraction in their eyes—a small, inconsequential figure in a world where cruelty reigned supreme.
As one of the raiders approached the kneeling child, his eyes fell upon the lifeless body of a tribesman, a shallow but fatal wound marking his neck.
The raider sighed, his gaze shifting to another man nearby, this one beheaded.
He quickly pieced together a story: his tribesman must have killed this beheaded man before meeting his own end.
It was a simple conclusion, one he accepted without question.
The thought that the small, bloodied child before him could have been the killer never crossed his mind—
—it was too absurd to even consider.
The raider's attention returned to Anik, who was now doing something strange.
Anik stabbed his own right hand, wincing but not crying out, and used the blood that welled up to draw a crude eye on his forehead.
The raider tilted his head, puzzled but intrigued.
It was an odd, almost ritualistic act, but in the midst of the chaos, it seemed like a bizarre form of entertainment.
With a shrug, the raider decided to let Anik continue.
After all, it was amusing to watch, and in this world of madness, even the strangest actions could pass as normal.
He stood there, a faint smirk playing on his lips, as Anik painted his face with blood, unaware of the dark resolve burning behind the boy's eyes.
As Anik completed the eye on his forehead, his lips moved in a faint, incoherent murmur, too soft to be understood.
Using his own blood, he etched intricate marks across his shoulders, torso, abdomen, and neck, each stroke deliberate and haunting.
Once finished, he slammed his head to the ground, prostrating himself before an unknown entity in fervent prayer.
"I, a devotee of Death, plead for your descent—
O Dancer who painted the Festival of Blood in carnage...
O Seraph of Death, sovereign of crimson tides,
Great Kraz Everbleed..."
Slowly, he lifted his head, arms spreading wide before clasping together as if in desperate supplication.
"HEED MY CALL!"
Tears of blood streamed endlessly from his eyes, staining his face and transforming his vision into a world drenched in crimson.
He turned his gaze upward, locking onto the moon—a moon that now burned with a blood-red glow, his own Crimson Moon.
In that moment, Anik's reality shifted, as though he had stepped into a realm where blood and shadow reigned supreme.
Time seemed to stretch and then freeze entirely, the world grinding to a halt.
From the stillness emerged a figure cloaked in black, his movements deliberate and haunting. With each step he took, a river of blood trailed behind him, its crimson waves flowing endlessly, as if bound to his very presence.
The air grew heavy, charged with an otherworldly energy, as the cloaked figure drew closer to Anik.