For the past 5,000 years since the last great battle, there was a force that traveled through space and time to ensure the world's safety from inevitable danger and destruction. The humans didn't know anything about it. Or at least, most of them didn't know.
Only a few selected individuals knew the truth about those chosen to defend the world. It was a hard task but in the end, those chosen people left the world with the knowledge that the world will continue their lives safe from harm.
But there is still the fear that a certain person's soul had carried in each of her reincarnations for the past 5,000 years. She knew right before her death that the battle will not be over by just sealing the dark force that once threatened to destroy the world. Their battle will only be over once the dark force had all been destroyed completely.
In the present times, her fear had begun to come to life.
= = = = = =
Somewhere in the mountains...
It was indeed a very beautiful day. Many had gone to do their ways of spending that day to the fullest. There was one elementary school that had planned a mountain trip for the students that day. From 1st grade to 6th grade, they went to that mountain. Though for each grade, they had different areas in the mountain that they must traverse.
But let's take a look at the 1st graders' tour to the mountain.
Besides having a tour of one of the most revered mountains in the area, the 1st graders also had plans of doing tree planting activities there. Some of the kids were excited, while some were... not exactly giving a care about it. In short, some kids looked bored with it.
There was a boy among them who was sitting, looking displeased and bored, on one of the big boulders there. He was looking over his classmates doing the tree planting. But as he did so, he couldn't keep feeling something weird on the boulder he was sitting at. He stood up to have a look. The weird thing was, he saw some sort of characters vaguely etched on it.
The boy wasn't so sure but he knew it was in Kanji. And being a first-grader, he wasn't exactly the smart one to be able to read Kanji at his age—especially if it was a Kanji that he could say as difficult as this one. But that wasn't the only thing he noticed. The characters were written in the middle of an etched lotus flower on the same boulder. All were crossed out by a big X mark and there was a hole in the intersection of the X mark. The hole was also situated in between the two Kanji characters.
"This field trip couldn't get any weirder..." the boy commented with a shake of his head. Just as he said that his eyes caught something that somewhat looked like glare from a glass. It came from below the boulder he was sitting at.
Well, no one could help it if it was out of curiosity. The boy crouched down and searched the ground for the source of that glare. After a few moments, he found it. To his amazement, it was a dark purple crystal—similar to that of obsidian.
When things couldn't get any weirder and boring for the boy, he decided to do something to save himself from dying of boredom.
"Kouta-kun, what are you doing?" From out of nowhere, the boy's teacher called out.
"Nothing, Sensei!" Kouta shouted back but didn't dare turn around to have a look. He was too busy etching the Kanji characters clearer and deeper than he saw on the boulder. Kouta did it as carefully and accurately as he could.
He couldn't tell why but Kouta felt that there was nothing wrong with doing it and something would happen if he retraced the characters to make it clear. As soon as he finished etching the Kanji characters along with the lotus flower shape, he even etched the big X mark, as well. Feeling satisfied with his work, there was one more thing he felt was the only thing left to complete.
But then—
"Kouta-kun!"
The boy turned around this time to see who it was. Much to his disappointment and displeasure, it was his homeroom teacher.
"What do you think you're doing? You're not supposed to vandalize anything from this forest."
"I-I just found it like this, Sensei."
"Kouta-kun!" Well, that only proved one thing. The teacher didn't believe him. Then she frowned as she eyed the item in Kouta's hand. "What are you holding?"
Kouta looked at what the teacher was talking about and that's when he remembered. He was still holding the crystal that he used to etch the characters and the other drawings.
"Kouta-kun, put it back where you found it. RIGHT NOW!"
For his teacher to use that loud tone, meant that she was not in a good mood right now. So instead of putting the crystal back to where he found it just like what his teacher wanted him to do (which was on the ground), Kouta decided to place it where he thought it was originally placed.
Kouta inserted the crystal into the hole situated between the two Kanji characters which was also the intersection point of the big X mark.
At that point, the teacher noticed the characters etched on the boulder. She frowned at the sight of it.
"Kanji...? 'Binding Seal'?"
Kouta fully inserted the crystal into the hole.
But that's when something extremely weird started to happen. The X mark glowed bright and the Kanji characters for 'Binding Seal' looked like they had shattered from the boulder to where they were etched. The big boulder started cracking in half as the ground violently shook. The others who were on that mountain began to scream and scramble in fear.
"What's going on, Sensei?" Kouta still managed to ask despite the fear he was feeling as he was holding on to his teacher's leg.
"We'll try getting out of here. Okay?"
Kouta nodded as he and the teacher tried to get out of that place. But before they could even get further away from the area near the boulder, both of them stumbled upon tripping onto a big tree root. They were about to get up when they felt something move from behind them. When the teacher looked back, her eyes widened in surprise and fear as the tree root which made them stumble had moved and wrapped the cracking boulder.
The tree root wrapped the boulder completely and soon after, it solidified and formed an even bigger version of the boulder with the wrapped tree root impression. It looked as if the root was trying to seal the cracking boulder. Yet the struggle didn't last long. The solidified tree root cracked and shattered almost immediately. The glow from the original crack intensified before it got covered by several more magical forces of nature that made both the teacher and Kouta gawk at it. A gust of wind, a stream of water, a beam of light, and a burst of fire—those forces accompanied the revived tree root into binding the dangerously cracking boulder. The intensifying glow from the boulder changed from bright gold to dark purplish black. It was an ominous aura.
Though the two witnesses wanted to see how the events would unfold, the teacher decided to ensure the boy's safety first. They stood up from the ground and started getting away from that place.
The dangerously magical event continued as the five forces tried to seal the dark force that was about to be released from the boulder with all its powers. But the struggle this time didn't last for too long. The dark force was too strong for the other five to contain any longer. The energy that the dark force from the boulder released resulted in a big explosion enough to create earth tremors to prevent people from even standing or sitting up.
The rage of the explosion dissipated after a few more seconds. The scene later revealed a halved boulder now covered in black soot from the recent explosion. But the most terrifying scene revealed was that the area around the boulder had black armored skeleton-like soldiers roaring and cheering like madmen. All of them held large black swords and spears that they waved around as they continued cheering.
A deep dark voice soon echoed from the hole that formed from where the boulder was originally erected. It stopped the soldiers from cheering as the voice caused the ground to shake slightly.
"Soon enough, we'll be completely freed from all of the five wretched seals, my minions. Now... It's the time! Let those humans have the taste of our powers now that we're going to be fully released!" the voice roared and the cheering resumed.
Both the deep voice and the cheering loudly resonated all through the areas surrounding the mountain.
At that moment, the terror began.