The Beginning

For this cruel, crooked world, the only solace he had left was in dreams.

The memory played behind his eyes with the warmth of a forgotten sun. A grassy field, a gentle breeze, and a laugh that felt more real than the ground beneath his feet.

“Who is this woman?” a version of himself, one not yet broken, whispered in the dream.

“I seem to know her.”

Her face turned to him, her smile impossibly bright, a beacon that promised safety and home.

“Oh… right,” he breathed, an unexpected smile on his own lips.

“That is Mia-San.”

A wave of feeling, pure and uncomplicated, washed over him. It was a warmth that spread from his chest to the tips of his fingers, a feeling he struggled to name. Love.

“So this is love,” he realized, and the moment the words formed, the vibrant world began to fray. The blue sky bled into a sickly gray.

“I want to hold her.”

He reached his hand out, but it never touched her, Like distant as a star. Instead, the dream gave him a sound—a shrill, terrified scream echoing from the cold, damp walls of a cave.

The golden blood. A child’s vacant eyes. His own hand, steady and merciless.

“Aki!”

A distant voice, a real voice, shattered the nightmare. Aki’s eyes shot open. He woke with a trembling gasp, the phantom feeling of a sword in his hand fading into nothing.

Rain dripped from a rotten tree.

Cold and steady.

His cheeks were already wet with tears.

He was alone.

Utterly and completely alone.

He pushed himself up, his body aching with a weariness that went bone-deep, and continued his long walk west.

At the edge of dawn, he saw it: the silhouette of a town. As he drew near the gate, two men in mismatched armor straightened up, their eyes heavy with fatigue.

“Is there a particular reason you are guarding so heavily?” Aki asked, his voice rough and cold.

The guard sighed. “The beasts nowadays… they’re smarter, and they attack often. The town hired us outsiders to help.”

Just as he finished speaking, a horrifying hiss echoed from the tree line.

A monstrous beast emerged, its form a twisted mockery of nature.

It had the long, slithering body of a snake but was covered in mottled fur, and from its shoulders sprouted two powerful arms ending in the vicious, unsheathed claws of a tiger.

“By the gods! A Serpent-Claw!” the first guard yelled, fumbling for his spear.

“Hold the line!”

He charged, but the beast was too fast.

It swatted the spear aside with one clawed arm and pinned the man to the ground with the other, its snake-like maw opening to strike. Aki sighed, a deep wave of frustration washing over him.

“They just keep coming.” For a flash, all he could see was Mia’s smile.

“Stand aside,” Aki said, his voice flat.

“Get back, kid, we’ll handle—” the second guard started, but stopped as Aki walked past him.

Aki moved with an eerie calm, placing himself between the beast and its prey. The Serpent-Claw hissed, recognizing a new threat. He simply raised a hand.

“Are you insane?! You’ll get yourself killed!” the pinned guard choked out.

Aki didn’t answer. His empty hand shimmered, particles of Grey light coalescing from nothing. In a single, fluid motion, a fine, impossibly sharp katana formed in his grasp.

Before the guards could even process what they were seeing, Aki vanished. He reappeared behind the beast in a blur of motion, his blade held low.

Swish.

For a moment, nothing happened. Then, a thin red line appeared across the Serpent-Claw’s neck. Its head slid from its body and thudded onto the mud.

The massive corpse collapsed a second later.

Silence. The two guards stared, their faces a mixture of shock and terror. The pinned man scrambled away from the corpse, his eyes wide.

“What… what are you?” he stammered, looking not at the dead beast, but at Aki.

Aki let the katana dissolve into mist, his expression unchanged. The other guard, finally finding his voice, spoke with a strange mix of fear and gratitude.

“You… you saved my life. Thank you.” He kept his distance, treating Aki like the monster he had just slain.

“A man moving that fast, with a blade from nowhere…” the first guard muttered, his eyes distant.

“You’re like something from the legend.”

Aki’s cold gaze finally settled on him. “Legend?”

“The story of the old king’s fall,” the guard said, his voice dropping to a whisper.

“They say an army didn’t beat him. It was three figures who moved as one, like a phantom with three bodies. A monster of a man, they called him.”

Aki’s expression didn’t change, but the information was filed away. “Is there an inn in this town where I can stay?” he repeated, his tone leaving no room for argument.

“Y-yes, of course,” the guard said, scrambling to open the gate.

“Go right in. No trouble from you, I imagine.”

Aki entered the town, the oppressive weight of fear in the air thicker than he’d expected. He found an inn with a sturdy-looking door and settled into a small, clean room.

The brief fight had done little to warm his frozen spirit.

A polite knock came at his door. Before he could answer, a stout, smiling man entered—the inn owner.

“Apologies for intruding,” the man said smoothly. “When I saw you walk in, you seemed like a commander… a man who knows how to handle himself.”

The word “commander” hung in the air, a dangerous and unwanted observation. Kindness from a stranger was a currency he couldn’t afford to trust.

Aki gave a curt nod, and the owner, getting the message, quickly excused himself.

Alone once more, Aki secured the door and sat on the edge of the stiff bed. The exhaustion of his journey weighed on him, but his mind was racing.

“Commander?” He closed his eyes, attempting to quiet his thoughts and focus.

As he did, a strange, cold pressure began to build behind his eyes. It was an invasive, unnatural feeling, like a needle probing the inside of his skull.

The darkness behind his eyelids swirled, and his own thoughts were drowned out by voices that were not his own.

The feeling of the lumpy mattress beneath him faded, replaced by images and sounds that flooded his mind.

He was no longer in the inn.

He was a silent observer in a pristine, white laboratory, the air smelling of antiseptic and strange chemicals. Before him stood two men.

One was the Rogue Scientist from the cave, his ambition now replaced by a reverent fear.

The other was a handsome, imperious man whose very presence radiated an insatiable hunger for knowledge.

“This was Greed.” Aki muttered

“The subject… the one from the cave…” the scientist reported, his hands trembling slightly.

“His blood, my lord. It defies all known principles. It is the very source code of creation. My experiments were crude, but they proved the potential is limitless.”

Greed nodded slowly. “Your crude work has confirmed our Grand Design. Power grows impatient with the lingering resistance, and Justice demands we accelerate the timeline.”

He looked at the scientist, his eyes gleaming with cold intellect. “And I… I require more data. The ‘Esmos’ subject is the key.”

“He is just one boy,” the scientist offered. “How can he change everything?”

Greed smiled, a chilling expression devoid of warmth.

“Because he is a relic of the old world… We will build a new one, a paradise where every worthy thought becomes reality… We will give humanity perfection, whether they ask for it or not.”

As he spoke, Greed suddenly went silent. His eyes lost focus, and he seemed to look past the scientist, past the walls of the lab, and directly into Aki’s observing consciousness.

“A flicker… the echo…” Greed whispered, a slow, predatory smile spreading across his face. He had felt the intrusion. He knew he was being watched.

“So it has finally awakened.”

In an instant, the lab in Aki’s vision vanished, replaced by a dark, empty void.

Greed now stood directly before him in this shared minds cape, his voice no longer a witnessed conversation but a promise delivered directly to Aki.

“You are a ghost of the old world, a memory of the pain we will erase. Do not struggle against the tide.” His eyes seemed to bore directly into Aki’s soul.

“This all will be over soon…”

With those final, echoing words, Aki’s eyes shot open.

He was back in the dim light of the inn, gasping for breath, the psychic pressure gone but the chilling voice still lingering in his mind like a shard of ice.

It wasn’t a dream. It was a message. A threat.

A cold resolve settled over him. He rose from the bed, his movements sharp and precise, and began to prepare for his training.

“I must hurry…” Aki said with determination.