Already Dead

Staring straight ahead, unresponsive to the world around her, she could barely recognize her own thoughts. An unfamiliar face appeared before her, diligently staring her in the eyes, but she still failed to make a meaningful response.

“What’s her name?” an old man’s voice questioned. “I’ve asked but for some reason she’s stopped talking,” a woman’s voice replied. “It’s like she’s shutting us all out.”

“She had a pretty bad injury,” the man stated, slowly creeping his way into view, “the fact that she even survived is a blessing from God.”

The woman’s eyes lowered, sadness overcoming her expression. “What the hell happened to that village?” she remarked, “If you think her being here is the work of God, then what we saw over that mountain was the work of a cursed spirit.”

Nodding his head as he ran his worn hand through his long stringy beard, he followed, “The Sovereign will speak on what we witnessed there, I’m sure…” He then took a deep breath as he turned away from the two of them. “In the meantime, I think we should get an Ayur to treat her. Otherwise, her wounds may reopen. I’ll reach out to Azu. He’s usually good with quelling the onset of mental disease as well. At this rate, if left untreated, I fear she may never speak again.”

The old man and the woman left the room with a deafening stillness. The wooden door aching with age as it screeched shut. Left alone in the small dark hut she now found herself in, she simply lowered her head as she began whispering to herself.

“Akari… My name is Akari Asakara. My name is Akari Asakara…”

“Akari!”

She gasped, her eyes torn open as blood dripped from her palms. The world around her was now a mere muffle, her mind split from the reality before her.

“Kuro,” Akari wept, “why am I not able to able to wake up?”

Kuro’s face was despondent, coated in dirt and blood. His entire body aching in pain. Fear constricting his chest. Yet he couldn’t feel a thing.

He cupped Akari’s hands into his, firmly holding them steady trying to stop the trembling. As he looked her in the eyes, it was as if she was looking past him. Like staring through a glass jar. “We have to go,” he pleaded, but she wouldn’t move, too reluctant to let the truth sink in.

A streak of blood stretched off into the distance where a mangled body lay. To think that very person had stood on his two feet just moments before, bearing a smile as he faced the prospect of death, to now become nothing. What was left of him was far from anything resembling a living being.

Although he had saved Akari’s life in exchange for his own, it may have only spared her for a few minutes at most.

Kuro checked his surroundings; eyeing one of their attackers spread out opposite of Akari, now a headless corpse. The other, however, was regaining his composure and making his way towards the two.

There was no one left to save them, no one to take a bullet for their sake. Just two lost souls trapped in a foreign world. Neither with the means to fight back. Kuro knew that their next breath could be their last. Their life capable of ending in an instant. He pulled Akari in tight, clutching her within his arms.

“We were already dead weren’t we?”

A shadow casted over them, with Akari feeling the hatred filled aura peering from behind her. An emerald-colored glow began to surround them, its ethereal energy forming into intricate markings. Glistening off the bloodied ground and taunting their deaths.

Kuro clenched his eyes shut, unwilling to watch his own demise.

Akari wrapped her arms around Kuro, a single tear running down the side of her cheek as her voice cracked.

“Yeah… I guess we were.”