They say it rains when the gods cry.

If so, then why — pray tell, is it not raining every day, when the city is in ruins and the people's cries are all you hear, when there's a field showered with blood in almost every direction you look at, when the houses are aflame, burning and engulfing everything until it's only ashes that remain? The reality is that no god can help you when it's you against fate. It won't rain for you to stop a fire, no. It certainly won't rain for a casual bystander like me in a world that's about to fall apart either, but that day, I had hoped.

Blindly, I had hoped for a savior to come.

It didn't have to be a damned hero, I remembered chanting. I just wanted to leave. To wake up the next day and breathe in fresh air. To perhaps, look out the window and smile, knowing that no one's dying that day. Yes, that's right, it didn't have to be a hero. No capes, no shining armors, no ridiculously terrifying looking weapons. Anyone would do, as long as they pulled me out of the darkness that loomed over our land.

And, you know, for a second I thought, "Wow, someone actually came," as I saw the cavaliers scout the city.

In the dark alley where I sat, covered in blood that's a mix of mine and someone else's, I foolishly stood up, reached out, and asked for help.

And everything got worse from that point on — because they weren't saviors. They were villains in my world, just like everyone else that did this to my home, my city, and my only family. So as they grinned like greedy pigs when they saw me, picked me up and bound me, threw me in a vehicle with other helpless people inside, I swore to myself I'd give back whatever they did to this land. Tenfold.

I remembered drowning out the voices of everyone else then, cried like there was no tomorrow, because indeed, if I had thought that everything before this was hell, well then — I was wrong. Once again, after that, and the days that followed, I was reminded that not everyone was born to live a good life.

———~~~———

I woke up with quite possibly the biggest headache of my life.

That time seemed so long ago now, and yet the memory was still so fresh — dug out of the crevices of my mind — and I remember it like it was yesterday.

Their fingers digging in my arms, bruising them, binding them, and the pain comes back whenever the nightmares flash by. Like a phantom sort of pain, years been gone but my brain somehow convinces me it's there.

I was never one to shout, but a wretched howl left my lips that day, and it wasn't mine alone. I had other people with me with the same level of anguish, people I didn't care about at the time, because my mind was in places, thinking, calculating, preparing for the worst.

It would've been easier if I hadn't seen them grow up, make a name for themselves, cry about their first break ups, or argue about little useless things that ended up getting them in trouble. But life is just like that when you're a people-watcher, and it brings dull colors to the idea that several lives were being put to a stop, not just yours.

I put my fingers up my temples. Breathe. Close your eyes.

Ah, it was a complicated world to be born in, but it wouldn't have been so difficult without the ones that wished to cause ruin. The ones that want to conquer. The ones that only want power. The Kamerian Cavaliers. Insufferable bastards. They look perfect on paper — and just as I described not needing; caped, armored, and equipped with weapons.

When I'd reached my hand out that day, hope glimmering in my eyes, I never expected that the ones who'd pull me out of the literal dark would be the same people who threw me in this ditch.

The Kainspell Tower. One of the twelve prisons of Kamerian territory — a place where you could either stay and live, or escape and die in the process.