Prologue

The battlefield clotted red, drying like spilled paint. The air hung heavy with the metallic tang of blood, a smell as familiar as burnt stew. Bodies of soldiers littered the ground like broken toys, their once-proud armor now dull and caked with blood. Their sightless eyes stared vacantly at the darkening sky, a view they probably didn't even register in their final moments.

A weary warrior trudged through the carnage, his face a mask of grime and dried blood. His sword, crusted crimson, looked more like a butcher's cleaver than a weapon of honor. It clinked rhythmically against his armor with each heavy step. He came to a halt before a figure unlike any other.

The figure stood amidst the carnage, an anomaly in a sea of red. Their clothes were a startling white, the kind that makes your eyes squint. Short black hair framed their face, revealing dark, emotionless eyes that seemed to pierce right through the warrior. The figure's posture was ramrod straight, like a soldier at attention, but their hands were folded neatly behind their back in a gesture of unsettling composure. They emanated an aura of eerie calmness, a stark island of serenity in the storm of violence that raged around them.

The warrior rasped, his voice raw, "Is this... the end?"

The figure in white barely blinked. Their dark eyes continued their silent survey of the battlefield, taking in the carnage with the disinterest of someone watching paint dry. Finally, their lips moved ever so slightly, and a single word escaped, flat and emotionless – "For now."

The warrior flinched, not at the word itself, but at the chilling indifference with which it was delivered. It sent shivers down his spine, colder than any battlefield wind. The figure in white then turned, their pristine white clothes rustling softly against the blood-soaked ground. They took a single, deliberate step away, their back still impossibly straight.

As they began to walk, their voice echoed faintly across the battlefield, cutting through the usual cacophony of dying groans and clanging armor. "Until the next time," they said, their voice devoid of any inflection, "until the next time they forget who we are and the cost of forgetting."

Their words hung heavy in the air, a dark promise spoken in a monotone. Then, with a final, almost imperceptible rustle of fabric, the figure in white melted into the gathering darkness, leaving the weary warrior alone amidst the crimson tide.

A fat, cold raindrop splattered on the warrior's helmet, then another, and another. Soon, a torrent of rain lashed down, washing away the grime and the blood, cleansing the battlefield like a cruel baptism. The warrior looked up at the sky, the dark clouds finally weeping for the fallen, their tears a stark contrast to the icy tendrils of indifference that had coiled themselves around the warrior's heart in the face of what he had just seen.