He opened his eyes to a kind of silence that makes your stomach drop. The kind that ends in screams after battle. The silence was what woke him, the sort that lingers after death. In front of him was a village that had lost its light. Smoke gathered, darkening the sky. Weapons covered in blood scattered everywhere. Clothes hung on windows, laid scattered across the ground.
The sky glowed radiantly. Light fell from the sky onto the ground, sending ripples across it.
And in the center of it… was him.
Ryco's blade dripped with dark-red energy. His shadow stretched over the scattered ruins of the village.
The last survivor. He breathed like it was his last. Deep and unsteady.
He was once a great hero.
In children's tales, there was a legendary hero, whose only aim was to keep a proper balance of power and control. Stories of him were the sort that breathed life back into a public that has seen too much. They would not stop until the people yearned to know again.
But that was before betrayal.
The new order made by the leader of the Prestigious Eight, personally picked by Toccato, labeled Ryco a dog that had to be put down. They left him bleeding in the ruins of a city he saved. Now… he walked, not with mercy… but vengeance.
You sought this power, he thought, looking off to the smoke rising in the distance. You got it.
So why do it feel everything ended the moment I reached it ?
Void wrapped the air, ground and sky. Nearby trees leaned toward the battlefield, stained and bent. Crimson Void wasn't normal power. It did more than bring destruction — it reshaped the mere things it touched. It made the world remember the weight of emotions.
It shifted, pulling at nearby surroundings. Cracks formed in the ground, and the very air twisted. He didn't look back. He didn't speak their names.
Behind him, three bodies. Gone. Once friends. Once hope. Only the faint sound of wind… carried by a voice. Familiar. Weak. Echoing from everywhere and nowhere all at once:
"Ryco… why didn't you stop…?"
Then more arose with the wind: "We trusted you." "We were your friends" "Why didn't we matter"…
Long ago in the past, before Ryco's purpose even bore fruit, the world was screaming in pain. Not because of the Eight. Not because of the captains. Not because of monsters.
But because humanity's emotions became too much for it to bear.
When the first world war took place centuries ago, the nations that fought didn't fight with metal. They weaponized their grief, their fear, even their hatred. And every death and scream caused from battle soaked into the land itself. Millions were dying, and the world absorbed all of it. The soil, the air, even the sky. The weight of emotions became so heavy it didn't disappear.
It became an echo.
A memory that refused to stay hidden.
Void, a force that answered to emotion. It enhanced it, fed on it, corrupted it. The stronger the emotions, the stronger it reacted. And ever since the world war, places soaked with death could still whisper to the living.
One whispers to Ryco.
But it wasn't a warning, or something to comfort him. It was like someone seeing themselves broken… and answering to it.