The ashes that fell that night weren't black...
They were gilded.
...Of course, Raizen didn't know what that meant. In that moment, the only thing he could feel was terror, holding him frozen in place.
The village's wall was shattered into a thousand pieces.
Stone and dust burst inward, and the bonfire's sparks were scattered like dying fireflies. The ground shook hard enough to knock bowls off laps and send people stumbling. Raizen was petrified, heart hammering in his chest, fish on the stick still in his hand. For a heartbeat, he couldn't understand what he was seeing.
The wall wasn't just cracked - it was gone, obliterated, a massive hole opened where solid stone had been. Jagged edges bled dust into the air, and through it, something seeped in. It wasn't smoke - it moved too much purpose. It wasn't shadow either, but something blacker than night itself, as if darkness had been given form and was slowly pouring into his world.
Just three minutes ago, everything had been perfect:
His father's laugh was too loud for the small fire, but that was the point - it cut through the evening chill, laughing about a fishing story that grew more ridiculous with every retelling. Raizen rolled his eyes, turning the skewer in his hands. The fish was starting to blister, snapping grease into the flames.
His mother passed behind him, her hand squeezing his shoulder - a brief, warm pressure that grounded him and kept his mind from drifting elsewhere. "You're burning dinner, Raizen" she murmured, already moving to pass a plate to the elder beside them.
It was a good night. The kind that felt like it would repeat forever.
That world - fishing, firelight, warm familiar faces - got torn apart in an instant.
The laughter died so fast it felt like it had never existed. Sound dulled, as if his ears had been stuffed with cotton. The bonfire still crackled, but it came from far away. Panicked voices sounded like underwater noises.
And through the dust, Raizen saw them.
Pulling themselves from the shadows, towering and ruined, with a rough human silhouette, but their limbs stretched too long, ending in jagged shapes. Their eyes - if they were eyes - were twin voids of flat, glowing white.
Nyxes.
The word didn't feel real in his head. It belonged in whispered stories, in rumors traded by travelers, in forgotten prayers - not here, not in front of him, not real. But even the whispered campfire stories didn't capture the absolute wrongness of them.
Panic erupted. Men scrambled for anything that could be held like a weapon - rusted blades, hunting spears, even burning firewood ripped straight from the flames. Someone shoved a child behind them with shaking hands.
Somewhere near, almost hitting Raizen, a spear flew, hitting one of the Nyxes. For a split second it looked like it went in, piercing. Then the darkness rippled and the sturdy shaft shattered like it was simply a stick. A torch was thrust toward another Nyx's chest and the flame flickered, then went out, the monster not even flinching.
Nothing touched them. Nothing mattered.
Somewhere across the village, despite all the chaos and screams, two figures moved in the opposite direction - his own parents.
His mother stood beside him with a cleaver in her hand - the knife looked too small, her shoulders looked too thin. Next to her, father gripped his fishing spear, knuckles white.
For one bright, stupid second, hope sparked in Raizen's chest. With a scream that thundered across the village, father thrust the fishing spear into the Nyx. The tip met resistance, looking like it passed through. But then the darkness coiled around the shaft like smoke given form, twisting tighter and tighter.
With a sickening crack, the wood splintered into hundreds of shards that exploded outward, spinning through the air and falling uselessly to the ground.
In less than a blink, the Nyx's hand lashed out and wrapped around his throat, lifting him off the ground like he weighed nothing. Father's feet dangled, his fingers clawed at the grip, frantic and desperate, but the Nyx's hand didn't even tremble.
"Dad!" Raizen gasped, clawing at the dirt, unable to stand. He had to do something. He had to reach them, he had to help, but his body betrayed him. The crushing weight pressed him down – feeling like something greater than fear - completely paralyzing him. He tried to crawl, tried to drag himself forward, but his arms shook and simply refused.
The dark hand around his father's throat tightened, and his body hung limp, like a puppet with the strings cut.
Raizen's throat ripped open in a sound he didn't recognize as his own.
Mother rushed in, lunging with the blade flashing in the dim firelight. She stabbed, she slashed, she struck again, but every cut tore through the dark mass knit itself back together immediately, as if her rage was simply a joke, the blade passing through the darkness and leaving nothing but brief ripples.
The Nyx casually swiped its free hand. It reformed mid-motion, darkness rippling like black water and becoming longer, sharpening.
Faster than Raizen's eyes could see, it sheared through her chest.
The knife slipped from her hand and clattered to the ground - stainless and clean, like it had never even touched a Nyx. She fell silently, her eyes finding Raizen through the chaos. They didn't hold a grand farewell - just raw, unfiltered terror. Her lips moved, forming a single word he couldn't hear over the ringing in his ears.
Run.
The Nyx dropped his father's lifeless body like discarded trash, and the other hand – the deformed blade – pulled itself back. Then it turned its glowing white eyes toward Raizen, and took one instant step that looked just as fast as the strike. Then another, slower. Another, even slower. Its hand lifted - reaching.
Raizen couldn't look away. He couldn't breathe. This was it.
Then, a pressure bloomed inside his skull.
It wasn't a sound heard with his ears. It felt too close, too cold to be human.
Raizen...
The whisper vibrated through his teeth, the words placed inside his mind, like a decision that had already been made.
You will suffice.
The Nyx froze. The entire surroundings seemed to lag, the falling embers from the ruined houses hanging suspended in the air.
The creature looking down at him—the absolute darkness that had just butchered his world – shuddered, then began to break apart.
Not from a weapon, not from a strike, but from the inside out.
The absolute blackness of its reaching arm peeled away in ribbons, instantly turning into ash. But not black ash.
Brilliant, shining, blinding gold.
The glittering particles drifted upward, defying gravity, swarming toward the suffocating, cloud-choked sky as if called home. For a heartbeat, the space where the monster had stood became a column of warm, ascending light, brushing his skin like warm snow. It was breathtakingly beautiful, and utterly horrific.
Run, Raizen. Run, as fast as you can.
The whisper in his head was like a whip crack. It didn't guide him; it simply shattered his paralysis. He slammed through the narrow alleyways between burning homes, smoke searing his lungs, rounding a corner and nearly colliding with another Nyx, its horrific, shifting mass radiating that strange, dark static. Raizen stumbled backward, waiting for the strike.
The creature slowly turned its white eyes, looking right at him.
And then, it looked away. It stepped past him, moving toward another vilager down the street.
It ignored him.