Shade sat alone in his room, staring blankly at his favorite toy dragon. The door creaked open, and a woman with snow-white hair and piercing light blue eyes entered. She sat beside him, her gaze lingering on his deathly pale face.
"Please... don't forgive me," his mother whispered, her expression a mask of deep-seated sadness.
Shade scratched his head, eyes filled with confusion. "Why are you sad, Mom? Did I do something wrong again?"
"No," she let out a weak, tired chuckle. "I did."
Shade reached out, patting her head to comfort her. "It's okay," he murmured softly. "If you can forgive me every time I do something bad, I can forgive you too, right?"
Her laughter turned hollow and dark. "No, you can't. You will never forgive me. You will always hate me."
*Why would I do that?* Shade wondered, his heart sinking.
"Because we—" she shook her head, "—no, because..."
Shade's eyes widened with sudden intensity. "No! I could never hate you. Never!"
"Silly boy," she whispered, her voice trembling. "Will you forgive me even if I do terrible things?"
Shade hesitated for a heartbeat before nodding. "Y-yes. I will. Just don't be sad."
She suddenly squeezed the palm he had used to pat her head—squeezing so hard it felt like his bones might snap. "Please don't. I have taken the life you deserved to live."
She broke down into tears, her composure shattering. Shade hugged her tight, his heart hammering against his ribs. Seeing her like this terrified him.
"Everything will be okay! Just tell me what happened!"
"Please save us," she sobbed into his shoulder. "Save us all. Only you can do it, Shade. Just give us one chance."
Before he could process her words, she pulled away. She began to scream, her hands clawing at her own white hair. "How could I kill him? He loved me! And those poor children... they did nothing wrong!"
"Mom, stop!" Shade grabbed her wrists, trying to keep her from hurting herself.
The room shifted. The walls bled a visceral red; the floor flooded with thick, warm blood. His teeth clenched in horror as dead bodies began to drift through the room—servants, guards, and family members. Everyone he had ever known was a corpse.
His mother reached into the gore and pulled out an object wrapped in a blood-stained black cloth, handing it to him. When Shade looked up to ask what it was, he let out a strangled scream. His mother was half-decayed, her flesh rotting before his eyes.
He stumbled back, falling into the blood. From the piles of bodies, a twisted, echoing chant rose from dead bodies with a horrific laughter
200 YEARS TILL DAWN, 200 YEARS TILL DAWN
The voices grew louder and louder, vibrating in his skull. Shade covered his ears and screamed for the world to end.
***
Silence.
His mother's hand felt colder than ice as she touched his cheek one last time. She gave him a faint, half-smile.
"Remember, Find the man of stories..."
A deafening dragon's roar shattered the vision.
"Agh!" Shade gasped, bolting upright.
His breath came in ragged hitches as the nightmare faded into the reality of the waking world. He let out a low, bitter chuckle as he wiped the cold sweat from his brow.
"I can never forgive you without knowing the truth, Mom. But 200 years, what does it even mean ?.
Suddenly, a heavy bag of trash slammed into the side of his head. An old woman stood over him, emptying a bin without a care in the world.
"Hey, old hag! Can't you see I was sleeping here?!" Shade yelled, jumping to his feet and shaking off the filth.
*Thwack!*
Another bag of trash hit him from behind. A younger woman with a rough voice glared at him from the alleyway entrance. "How is anyone supposed to see you if you're sleeping in a damn dumpster, brat?"
Shade had no defense. He hopped out of the dumpster and kicked the metal side in frustration, only to howl in pain as he stubbed his toe. "Damn it! That hurts!"
The woman laughed at the sight. "Of course it hurts, idiot."
"Shut up!" Shade snapped. He quickly grabbed his bag, checking his belongings, and began walking toward the main street.
"I'm only letting you go because you've got a cute face, kid!" the woman shouted after him. Shade's cheeks burned crimson. "S-shut up!"
He pulled his yellow cloak over his head, only for a discarded banana peel to land on his shoulder. He kicked it away, nearly tripping over his own feet in his haste to leave. The woman watched him until he disappeared into the crowd, a nagging thought in the back of her mind. She felt as though she had seen that white hair and those striking blue eyes somewhere before.
***
Aristo was the smallest, filthiest city in the Alvery Kingdom. Surrounded by water on all sides, it was overpopulated and suffocating. Houses were built so close together they seemed to choke the narrow streets. Those with no shelter lived in the alleys, fighting for a patch of dry dirt. If you died here, you ended up in the gutter; there wasn't even enough land to bury the dead.
People flocked here like sheep anyway. In Aristo, it was better to fight humans than the monsters that roamed the lands outside.
Shade moved through the crowd with his head down, avoiding eye contact. People looked at him with disgust, but he remained indifferent. He kept his right hand inside his bag, fingers gripped firmly around the hilt of his dagger.
He turned into a narrow alley and moved a heavy rock, revealing a hidden, rusted entrance to the sewers.
"Hey, brat."
Shade turned to see a fat man leaning against a crumbling wall, smoking a cigarette. "What?" Shade glared.
"You got a death wish? It's not safe down there."
"And why is that?"
The man took a long drag and exhaled a thick cloud of grey smoke. "Ever ask yourself why the homeless sleep in the alleys instead of the dry parts of the sewer?"
"Because it smells like shit?"
The man laughed darkly, a wolfish grin spreading across his face. "No. Because there are monsters down there."
"So no one lives down there?" Shade asked, his interest piqued.
"Exactly."
"Then I have a better chance of finding him."
"Wait, kid, you don't understand," the man said, his voice dropping an octave. "You won't even find bodies. They eat everything."
"Don't worry. I'll be okay. So buzz off" Shade offered a grim smirk and descended the ladder.
The fat man sighed, flicking his cigarette butt into the mud. "Idiot. Stop making the monsters fat."
***
Shade's hand slipped on a slick rung, and he fell the last few feet, landing hard on his butt. "Damn it."
He stood up, brushed himself off, and lit a white crystal lamp. The stench of the tunnels was overwhelming. He pulled his cloak up to cover his nose and began to walk. He wandered the tunnels for hours, searching every alcove. Finally, he pulled out a small notebook and crossed a name off a list.
"Nine days wasted for nothing. It's stupid to think finding the man of stories in gutter"
"I'll never get answers," he muttered, his teeth clenching in the dim light. "This was the last city in the kingdom. I should look for him in the—"
"Chu... chu..."
Shade froze. A high-pitched, almost cute sound echoed from the darkness ahead. "Is that just a rat?"
Chu!
"I don't have food, go away," Shade said, turning his lamp toward the sound. His blood ran cold. The rat emerging from the shadows was the size of a tiger, its fur matted with filth and its eyes glowing a demonic, hungry red.
"Tsk. A cute voice for an ugly body." Shade drew his dagger.
The rat charged. Shade remained perfectly still, counting the heartbeats. At the last second, as the beast lunged with bared teeth, he stepped aside.
Stab!
His dagger sank deep into the rat's forehead. The sheer weight of the creature slammed into him, pinning him against the damp, mossy wall. "Shit... get off me, you fat hairball!"
He shoved the heavy carcass off. As he reached for his dagger to pull it out, the rat's face suddenly shifted. It morphed into the face of his mother, her eyes weeping blood.
"You should kill yourself," the rat-mother hissed in a twisted, distorted version of her voice.
He stared at them for a long moment, then reached into his bag and pulled out a two-inch red crystal. He licked it once—a strange, instinctive ritual—and the stone began to glow with intense, vibrating heat. He dropped it directly into the huddle of rats.
BANG!
The explosion rocked the tunnel, turning the nearest rats into a red paste. All the rats fled—all except for the one with Shade's dagger in its eye. It remained still, staring at him calmly through the smoke.
Shade smirked and flipped the beast the middle finger before turning and disappearing into the crowded city streets.