As my crimson life flows out of my shoulder before my eyes, I look back on my life. I regret nothing. I had lived a peaceful but studious life. I never got into trouble, and I was never bullied, but I wasn't lonely either. I always had a few friends and we would do friendly things, working on projects together, going to parks and playing around, and having lunch together. "They might be sad when I die here, but I guess I won't find out…" I thought as my heart was beating in my ears and flowing down my arm. It feels hot. So hot. I had graduated from junior high and gotten into my high school of choice. I graduated from there at 17, and now I am 18 and working as a clerk at a café, as I had chosen to. I enjoy experiencing pieces of the lives of the people around me, peacefully.

"Now do you wanna give me the money?" My assailant says with a manic grin on his face, holding the knife in my shoulder, only to pull it out and hold it to my neck.

"N… No…" I gagged, resisting until the end. It hurts... But I will forever respect this café and the peace it gave me. I won't be the one to let this guy have its earnings.

The criminal's grin faded away as he pulled his knife back, a mantis about to strike.

"Die."

And so I did.

And it was cold.

"Or did I?" is what I would like to say, but I can't do that. It's not true. At this point, I am undoubtedly dead. Therefore, my life should no longer be told of, correct? Not exactly, it would seem, as I still feel conscious. Mere seconds after my undeniable death, however, I seemed to have woken up. Not in a hospital. Not in the café. Not in my house. Not in Japan. In fact, it doesn't even feel like earth.

I awaken in a gigantic room of stone brick and red, velvety carpet. A room of huge wooden doors with extravagant designs. A room of a throne and a king, holding a scepter and watching, watching carefully. A room of a royal guard, no, two royal guards. I am one of them. And I am watching, watching carefully, just as the guard standing opposite me is.

I shed a tear. Or maybe, my body sheds a tear, for I do not understand my surroundings. The king's face twitches, as if his face of focus is only a mask over his sadness. The guard opposite me wears a grim expression. Among anger, expectance, nervousness, fear, and sadness, the face bears every emotion and displays them intelligibly. My face wears tears. It wears my own expression of confusion, and it wears my body's tears.

Am I in another world? The afterlife? Those questions do not matter to me. I clearly have a role to fill, and I will try my best to fill it.

"Something's going to happen." The thought is the most apparent thing. I feel it in my bones, running down my spine. What? What is going to happen? I don't know. I want to know, but I don't.

I will find out, I think, and I watch. I watch carefully, staring at the door. Staring like the king, like my fellow guard. There is silence. The silence pulls down the weight of the air. It pulls my heartbeat to my ears and brings back the pain of death. My shoulder stings, but only for a moment, as there is no wound. This is no dream.

That was only the calm before the storm. The "calm," if you call it that, was the silence drilling into my head. You could say that you can't call that calm, that is, if the storm wasn't itself. The storm… Could you call it that? The disaster? Occurrence? Murder?

A man bursts through the door. He bares the smile of my killer, but worse. A tiny grin, piercing through your soul, driving fear down to your core. He is wearing a robe of black and orange, changing between colors not at all dissimilar to molten, flowing lava. His presence melted hope in the same way lava would melt anything else.

"I want to live," I think, feeling his aura of death.

"*You're*... *here*… *darkness,*" I hear a foreign voice emitting a foreign structure of foreign words, coming from the king. Somehow, as if I'm understanding the impact of the words rather than the words themselves, I feel what he says.

Darkness… that's what this man is, I think. His presence brought darkness to the room lit by chandeliers and the midday sun through stained glass windows. His darkness seemed to only be lit by the meek glow that could be felt by the 'magma' in his robe.

"Hmph," grunts the pale man called darkness, confidently. "... ..?" He speaks in an unknown tongue as well, asking a question and tilting his head with a grin, but this time, I don't understand. He had begun to pull silvery cloth gloves with tiny metal plates over his hands as he spoke. He manages to do everything menacingly.

The king gets up from his seat, placing his scepter atop the two arms of the throne. "*We*… *begin,*" the king says grimly, as I understand the meaning behind only his words as well. He walks towards the man, readying himself for battle. A breeze blows through the castle, but not from the doors, which had already closed.

'Darkness' draws a curved knife from his waist, the blade facing downward and behind him, with the curve toward the king. As he grips the dagger, it begins to glow, hotter, hotter, red hot. He twirls the blade in his hand and throws it precisely at the king, only for him to swipe his hand and create a barrier, reflecting the knife. The blade spins and returns to its owner's hand after clattering onto the ground. Immediately after 'darkness' catches his blade, the king draws a bronze, gold coated naginata from his back. The blade glows white as he readies to attack. The king swipes at the air twice in opposite diagonal directions, creating floating white projectiles that accelerate towards the attacker. 'Darkness' quickly dispels them with a few swipes of his dagger.

He loses his grin as he mutters something, "*No*.. *patience.*" I understand some of the meaning behind what he says this time. Then, 'darkness' raises his arm and aims it towards the king, and his glove begins to glow in the same manner as his knife. It gets hotter, hotter, even hotter than before, and still hotter. His hand begins to radiate heat, and the air around his hand warps more and more, and the area being warped grows more and more as his hand grows hotter.

The king is sweating immensely as he shows a grim expression of fear on his flushed face. "*Save*.. *them*…*Goodbye.*" The king raises his own hand as he speaks, and a shining energy flows out of it, and into me and the other guard whose face is shocked and horrified. Just after that, the king began to melt away, his flesh to his bone, down to a puddle of goop on the ground. A gruesome sight if there ever was one. The guard opposite me seems to fade into ashes as my consciousness fades as well, and with a "glop" noise, I black out.