A plume of dust and debris kicked up as the concrete shattered.
Fate was sent flying as the demon tumbled head over heels into a pit over twenty feet deep. Fate landed with a groan on his head, bleeding thigh, and mangled hand, seeing stars as his scalp broke open.
Another arrow flew from above and into the cloud, disappearing in the dust.
A second explosion rocked the street, the sinkhole deepening even further, only for the hole to collapse in on itself, dirt and rock pouring into the hole and burying the screaming demon alive.
Fate gasped several seconds later as he pushed himself up, half of his robes soaked through with crimson liquid and torn in many places from the concrete surfing he just experienced. He felt stinging scrapes all over his right side.
He had been so distracted by the pain of having his arm mangled that he forgot to use his Skill.
Holding his devastated right arm with his left, he used his Mage Reach to staunch the bleeding of his arm, head, and thigh while pulling his sword toward him.
The weapon teetered over the edge of the pit, which after being filled was only a few feet deep. It wobbled before sliding across the ground toward him and making the unpleasant sound of metal scraping against stone.
Any imp that tried to attack Fate found their weapons passing through him harmlessly as he stood in a daze, gripping his sword's hilt absentmindedly with his left hand.
He had lost a lot of blood, the aesh having squeezed it out like juice from a lemon, so he was feeling light-headed and his vision was splotchy.
'Am I… going to die?' he wondered, his thoughts muddled as the headache the drums induced worsened while his body desperately tried to piece itself back together.
He didn't know how much blood he'd have to lose to face death, but he felt like he was close, and he didn't think there was a Mage in the crowd capable of healing him.
He never truly understood how vital blood was to his life until now, when he had nothing but time to think. His breathing was faster and harder to do, he was so dizzy he felt nauseous, and he felt so bone-chillingly cold.
Blood provided warmth to one's body, carried oxygen throughout one's system, and was necessary for the brain to properly function. Losing it was like losing the Mana to fuel his Skill, nothing but a detriment.
That small epiphany earned him a small bump to his Facet, bringing him from 8% to 8.5% through the Journeyman Stage, but it did nothing to help his situation. But since he had nothing to do except think, he kept doing so, even as his vision started to swim and his thoughts turned heavier.
Why was he dying? His mind kept going back to that question, as it was the only thing that prevented him from focusing on his failing body.
He was dying because of his wounds, but why was he wounded? Carelessness? He was anything but careless in that fight. A superior foe? That sounded likelier.
But then, why was he alive? Why had the aesh tossed him aside? Fate could've just as easily experienced a premature burial with the aesh.
Pride? Arrogance? Those were under the dominion of the kitsubi, weren't they? Aesh harnessed Wrath and Envy, neither of which would motivate such an action.
Envy was easy to spot. The demon had wanted Fate's sword before he had even possessed it, and Fate suspected it was a mixture of Envy and Wrath that spurred the aesh to launch this attack.
But the Assimilation War was thousands of years ago. Nearly every human alive right now hadn't even been conceived back then, so why did civilians like him have to suffer for the actions of his ancestors?
At the back of his mind, he heard a faint, frantic line of questions, but he was too out of it to make sense of what was being said.
He fell onto his left side and closed his eyes, his skin as pale as the snow.
The seductress called sleep tugged at his psyche, but Fate couldn't sleep even if he wanted to, his mind continuing to work even as he became too distracted by his errant thoughts to keep his wounds sealed close.
Millions of lives, the aesh woman had said.
The Empress had taken the lives of at least a million aesh during the Assimilation War, and now the aesh sought to inflict that same level of death onto the human race.
Humans were a tenacious race, Fate thought, so they would survive at least in part. Their Imprints alone would ensure that enough humans lived on to one day return to their previous numbers.
Then what? Would the humans resurface in a hundred thousand years to retake their kingdom from the aesh?
Wouldn't the aesh survive by the skin of their teeth afterward, forced into hiding? The humans had no way of knowing just how deep the aesh's influence was.
Where had they come from? Where had they been, and why hadn't the extensive investigations of the humans turned up even a scrap of evidence to suggest the aesh still lived?
Fate was certain that even if the humans won this war, they wouldn't see the last of the aesh.
The more Fate thought, the more he uncovered the infinite loop of death and violence that this war would create.
Death...
Something hovered about in his fading thoughts, something about death that demanded his attention, but no matter how hard he tried, that fuzzy idea couldn't solidify.
'I'm going to die,' he thought again, this time sure of it. 'All this progress, all that effort, only to die from a little blood loss.'
'…ate! Hol… the wa…'
'They say death is life's greatest mystery,' he mused. 'But isn't it life's greatest failure? Death is the signal of life's defeat, the end of what life had spent all that time building. Just like all the time I've poured into myself is about to end…'
Death always won, he thought. But if that was true, then why was there still life? Wasn't it because life and death couldn't exist without each other?
His mind turned to the synopsis of "The Coin Paradox."
Life and death were in an endless loop, much like this war. Life fed death, which in turn fed life.
So how could he break that loop?