Chapter 1: Misery.....

Chaos...

So much chaos.....

Please stop screaming...!

I have not done anything to you, I am not the cause of your pain. please...please....stoppp! Stop screaming...

In the dim, flickering candlelight of an ancient forest, a young man's body lay broken and still. Shadows danced across his unusually colored skin, which was slick with sweat and dirt. His eyes were tightly shut, and his eyelids trembled every now and then, it seemed that he was having a nightmare. 

The wind that rustled the dry forest trees, bore witness to his suffering. But he was not the only one there, countless corpses also bore witness to his misery, their eyes were empty, some of the corpses still had fear in their eyes as they stared into the abyss, silently pleading for mercy. The roots of the forest trees seemed to close in around the corpses that were strewn on the forest floor.

Kyrios suddenly woke up like as if he was lost in a terrible nightmare. he had a splitting headache, and everything he felt, he thought it to be a figment of his imagination. but even in his thoughts, he could still hear the screams of countless people as they screamed in agony, he felt himself slip into madness the more he listened to the noise they made. this terrified him to no end almost to the point that he only felt the bone chilling coldness surrounding his body moments later. 

His body, despite its youthful resilience, was a battlefield of chaos and confusion. within the depths of his subconscious, a primal struggle raged. On the one side, the screams of the dead haunted him to no end. On the other, his body was screaming at him, roaring in pain and indignation.

His heart pounded with a desperate urgency, each beat sending ripples of agony through his veins. Blood, thick and sluggish, fought to circulate through his limbs, many of which now lay useless and unresponsive. his breathing, shallow and erratic, rasped in the still night air, each breath a painful reminder of his body's fragility.

The cold wind bit into his wounds and the pain shot through his spine, activating his autonomic nervous system, that ancient and unerring sentinel of survival, had taken control. a surge of adrenaline coursed through his bloodstream, igniting a fire within his chest.

His muscles tensed, as if preparing for battle, even as they trembled from the strain. sweat poured from his brow, a cold and clammy testament to the body's frantic attempts to regulate its temperature.

The sharp tang of fear hung heavy in the air, mingling with the decayed earthy scent of the barren forest floor.

He realized that he could see nothing, he was awake, but he could see nothing. He almost lost his mind thinking that he had lost his eyes somehow, but he felt a reaction from his eyes the moment he calmed down but sadly, they could not open. His eyelids felt heavier than any steel blade he had ever held in his sixteen years of living.

Even beneath his eyelids he could not perceive any light, and that meant that he could likely not see the situation he was in, and this scared him to no end. 

He tried to breathe but there was a weight on his chest, making it tough to even open his mouth. his whole body felt heavier than a casket made of steel. Within his core, deeper still, his organs waged a war of their own. his kidneys, starved of adequate blood flow, it fought to send off distress signals that were lost in the cacophony of his body's cries. His liver, battered and bruised, struggled to filter the flood of toxin's that threatened to overwhelm him.

Every heartbeat was a herculean effort, a fight against the growing tide of lactic acid that turned his blood into a sluggish, corrosive mire.

Through it all, his subconscious cling to life with a ferocity that bellied his fragile state. he knew he had to move, he had to at least do something. his momentary safety considering that he was not yet dead, would cost him more than his life, his unborn siblings will die without him, he had to get back to them, he cannot leave them alone in this terrible world, just like the way their father left them. 

The instinct to survive, to endure, to fight against the dying light in his subconscious, like a flame it burned within him, refusing to be extinguished. His mind, teetering on the edge, was a storm of fractured thoughts and primal urges. Memories of his home on the mountains, the hope to see his malnourished baby siblings grow to become powerful and finally escape their fragility.

The hope to see his unborn siblings mature enough to escape the confines of their mother's corpse, flickered like distant stars in the dark void of his suffering. 

But you would ask him, what are stars? he will tell you that he does not know what you mean. Because he has never seen a star from the moment he was born, but that was not his concern at this moment.

In the eerie silence of the forest, time seemed to stretch and bend, moments blending into an eternity of torment, The young warrior's body, a vessel of agony and defiance, lay at the mercy of forces beyond his control. and yet, somewhere in the depths of his being, a spark of hope remained, a whisper of a chance that he might rise from the ashes of hit despair.

Moments later after fumbling about, trying every little trick he could, to get a response from his body, he realized that it would be counterproductive to rush into the situation. and so, the first thing he tried was to get his breathing back to normal. because if he spent long without breathing, he would die of the lack of air.

But this was proving to be harder than climbing a mountain, and so having no choice, he resorted to using a trick. a trick his father taught him long before he disappeared. him leaving them alone, made him hate his father more than anything in this world.

But it was the only thing he could do right now. and so, using the little energy he had in his body, he pushed out all the air in his body, and like a locomotive he started to breathe in and out rapidly, but inhaling no air into his body.

This continued on for a little while until he suddenly stopped. and like stepping on the brake of a car, his blood gushed though his body as it rapidly moved to his brain. if he was not already wounded, he would have screamed from the rupturing of the veins in his body. but this got his body functioning. heat spread through his body and his sluggish body warmed up a bit.

This trick he used has saved him countless times before. And at this moment his sense of smell has for some reason enabled him to access the situation in his surroundings. This has always caused him to wonder, how was he able to know what was happening around him just by virtue of using his sense of smell?

His struggle paid off finally, his senses came back to him one by one, whereas before they felt blank, he was now able to see a light at the end of the tunnel. his heart's activity increased, and more blood was supplied to nourish the rest of his body with time. 

His sense of touch returned, and with it came an existential dread. he felt a heat that felt unnatural surround him, it was unnatural in a way that, it did not feel like the heat from a flame, but more like aa heat that sought to erase his existence. In between the heat, he felt droplets of a sticky liquid rain on his body like a rain shower. 

Next came his sight, his eyelids finally had enough energy to open. once his eyes opened, he finally saw the sky over his head. a sky that has never changed from the moment his learnt how to see. 

The sky was bleakand rainy, it hang heavy with thick,dark clouds, obscuring, any light from reaching the earth. this cast a somber, muted light over the dead forest landscape. the clouds were an oppressive shade of gay, almost black in some places. The clouds seemed to press down on the dry earth with their weight. black rain fell steadily, a relentless, soundless drumming patter creating a feel of dread. and melancholy. visibility was reduced to a black foggy haze, with distant objects appearing as shadowy indistinct shapes.

The air is cold, damp and sharp. Filled with a scent of cold death. Occasionally, a gust of rustled the leave less branches of the forest trees. sending a shiver down his wounded throat. the overall scene is one of pervasive gloom, evoking a sense of isolation and introspection.

While he could her the roar of the wind, the screams of the dead sounded even louder. 

He said to himself in mockery. "Another day in our cursed world." He did not seem to find his situation weird at all, he has been finding himself in such situations on a number of occasions from the moment he could walk.

After some energy had returned to him and he could now move his body. the first thing he did was to try to get a look on the situation he was in, thought he likely guessed it, he wanted to be sure.

Turning his neck with great difficulty he was finally able to see, and what he saw, no matter how he had stilled his mind, nor how many times he had seen such situations, he always reacted the same every time. His skull numbed and he felt a great misery seeing the countless corpses of 'things' he called his 'kind!!

Why...? Why? What did we do to deserve this misery?