Nothing but pain filled Asaki's surrounding, each one of his limbs, each tips and parts of his soul... An invisible fire kept burning everything down, even the ashes it produced all by itself.
The wind was brutally hitting the young man's whole body, or maybe wasn't it, his mind just turning tricks on Asaki. It's not like the man could really feel something else than the omnipresent pain, anyway. How could a dead man feel pain ? And...
How was he still able to think, as well.
Moving any part of the wounded body was truly impossible, and no matter how hard Asaki tried, he didn't know since how much time he was laying here. Had an hour passed ? Or two ? Maybe three, if not four...
... Or maybe had just a minute passed as well, his blurry mind kept any spatial or time awareness from filling it, the poor and shattered thoughts crossing it already doing so hardly.
'I... 't feel... body...'
Now, the fire of pain had taken the form of dozens of hands, each equipped with sharp and long fangs surely able to cut through anything. His flesh, already burning since an unknown time, started to feel like being slashed apart, each of his muscles being removed by the fog of pain.
After another hours, Asaki got used to the pain, and was now floating in the middle of his consciousness and unconsciousness. It still burnt... His body which he couldn't feel or see still burnt, what a contradictory sensation... How could he feel something he didn't have burning ?
The fainted thought quickly became blurry, as it disappeared into the eternal fog in no time. Being unconscious felt really weird, time seemed to pass slower than ever but also... Seemed so short here... Not a single complete thought could feel in Asaki's mind, but he still was able to feel, and aware of everything.
'Don'... Like a... Sleeping...'
And here came the strange time passing again... During an eternity, Asaki kept travelling through an infinity of realms, all a part of a distorted pain forming an entire universe.
Another hour passed...
Another....
Another...
Another...
And Another....
'Light... Not moving a... all...'
Indeed, the tremendous orange sky dressing above his head didn't seem like it was moving at all. It felt like it was frozen in time, a photography...
Wait.
Since when could Asaki finally see ??
"Huh..."
Soon, an ever more dreadful and painful wave immersed inside of the young man's body, violently grabbing each of the cells composing it to tear the man apart. Surprised by such a violence, Asaki's head immediately turned to the side, vomiting during seconds a continuous flow of blood mixed with saliva, and what he may have eaten before.
"Cough, cough !!"
Thanks to this experience, the student couldn't breathe at all during even more seconds, but was at least completely awakened now.
'What... What happened ?'
Another furious urge of coughs filled his throat, finally giving Asaki the chance to breathe again. Above his head, as if it was saluting him, the orange sky grew even shiner, its light slowly starting to recover the pristine hair of the survivor.
Around the orange view, filled by clouds and fainting stars, was slowly growing a dark and unusual void. Soon, Asaki will surely lose consciousness again, and maybe forever, this time.
'I'm really going to die in my...'
Asaki wasn't in his garden anymore.
'Where am I ?!'
°°°
Beneath his motionless body could be felt, and seen, sand. A seemingly wide horizon of sand, ending a dozen of meters away from Asaki as if it was a mountain. If not for the buildings, and construction walls seeing around his surrounding, Asaki would have mistaken this place for a desert's dune.
But it didn't felt logic at all... If Asaki had, indeed, landed on a dune in the middle of a construction site, why was he still alive ? His blurry memory reminded him of trees so far that they looked like grass, not even sand could amortize such a fall...
Then, how did he survive ?
The young man coughed again a few more times, expanding even more the black screen inside of his eyes. But as his head shook a few times because of the action, a deep red form appeared in one of the remaining corners of his eyes, and this time, it was real. What looked like a giant blood print was, indeed, covering a large part of the sand.
Luckily, it wasn't Asaki's. With difficulty, the young man had managed to roll on the sides, tears of pain uncontrollably filling his whole view as well. But thanks to this action, it was now finally possible to see the owner of this gigantic quantity of blood.
In the middle of the giant deep circle of wet sand, was dressing the Bird monster-Or at least... What remained of it. If not for the ridiculous quantity of feathers dispersed everywhere, the abstract form of crushed bones and shattered flesh would've been deeply mistaken for anything else.
The link between Asaki and this form was then pretty easy to guess. As the two forms fell from the sky, one's corpse shielded the other, and since his body was most likely intact...
'My body is intact but... What's inside...'
Another wave of pain, this time, got Asaki suddenly screaming of pain for a couple of minutes, impossible to contain. Drops of saliva, filled with blood, were dirtily escaping his lips, as his vision lost at least half of it capacity now.
'No...'
For the first time since he awoke, Asaki finally felt something else than pain filling his heart. Death was coming closer and closer, its now feelable aura making the dying man lose himself in fear.
Asaki didn't wanted to die, he couldn't die now ! Not now... Not after he managed to escape the two predators... Asaki was really about to die ?? Dying ??
'Please... No..'
Miserably, the white form started to crawl toward the sun, each of the movements causing him enough pain to almost faint.
'Can't someone... help... me...'
Soon, the black screen totally filled his vision, the young man now crawling to something he couldn't see anymore.
His limbs became colder and colder, and movements weaker and slower. A strange sensation inside of the cold blizzard taking place in his body appeared, the sensation of having this soul getting aspired by something.
The motionless body lost all the pain who was possessing it until now, as well as every sensation and thoughts. Gradually, Asaki lost more and more parts of him, taken by Death.
His surrounding, now a total void of darkness, and empty from any warmth, was stretching to the infinity. The more time he spent here, the more time Asaki felt like nothing, a sand particle in space...
'Don't... Wanna...'
The only part of his being still holding to life was also losing in strength and endurance. Soon, in like some minutes, if not seconds, Asaki will disappear, and get lost forever in this emptiness.
"Aw..."
Inside of this eternal darkness, however, echoed a fainted voice. Its words were inaudible, only a slight part of it resonating again, and again.
"Aw...e..."
"Awa..e...
"Awake..."
Was he dreaming ? What bastard brain would trick Asaki while he was dying ? Until the end, his delusions will f*ck his life, huh...
"Awake !"
The voice was deep, that of a mature man, and filled with an emotion stronger than any Asaki ever heard. So much wrath, conviction, and... Power...
"Awake !"
"Awake !"
"Awake !"
"Awake !"
The only word spelled by the voice echoed, again and again, a dozen, hundreds, even thousands time in less than a second. At first, nothing happened. But then...
From the depth of nothingless, emanated a surprising... Warmth...
Each words, each sounds, each noises, filled Asaki with a new energy. Warmth and power reached his body, painfully entering inside as it started to travel through his veins, and heart.
At first, the process was calm, painful but calm, and slowly burning with a warm and gentle force to the young man's body.
But quickly, the travelling energy escalated in speed, now violently propelling itself even deeper. It felt as if it was mining Asaki's flesh, and at light speed. Each second passing by, the now only white eyes of Asaki continued to express an unbearable pain, as his entire body, both physically and mentally, convulsed on the ground for minutes.
"AAAAAHHHHH !!!"
Asaki's own scream awoke him from the depths of unconsciousness, vomiting even more blood just beneath him before weakly opening his eyes.
Around him, nothing had changed. The sky was still orange, his body still in a single piece, the corpse of the monster still scattered everywhere behind him, and the scroll still firmly held by his hand, slowly disintegrating.
The black form, covered by golden unknown letters, kept disappearing, as if absorbed by his body. The voice had also stopped, its sound now replaced by the quiet noise of the wind, hitting against Asaki's ears...
He was back...
But something still felt awkward...
Since when was he holding a scroll ???
And as soon as the black form completely disappeared, everything turned black again.