He began to wonder how he was even alive. His vision was blurry, and blood flowing from the wound in his head unending. Just like a river.
This river of blood, was tainted. The souls of the dead infested his body, hoping to invade his body, and sent his eternally living soul into the depths of the darkness.
He stared at the sky, a green tinted sky, a sky that seemed empty, shallow. He laid on the muddy ground of the Loathing Pearl Marketplace, of a rather expansive castle town.
The reason as to why he was in this state, well…
He just had to stumble into a young noble, who was standing above him in disgust.
==
The world right now was in its Golden Era.
In the G.P.C, the Golden Pillar Calender, which is mostly used by only the nobles of the Northern Central Continent, they were currently in the Third Celestial Epoch.
Millions of years ago, during the time when humanity didn't even exist, the [Divinities], alongside mythical beasts and allpowerful demons invaded. These Divinities are known amongst the humans, as Demigods.
Their origin was unknown, and why they came to this world was also unknown. But, the only thing that's clear is, they were the rulers.
Eventually, however, the Divinities started to get bored of this planet, and they left mysteriously. And somehow, the Mortal Deities appeared. These Deities were humans who had ascended somehow.
They wielded abilities beyond imagination, and were the supposed subjects of the divine, with the ability to destroy mountains, pierce the skies, and create earthquakes and tsunamis at will.
But, they didn't even light a candle to how strong the Divinities were. The Mortal Deities were now were the ones who ruled as kings, but they truly feared the day that the Divinities would come back.
And Nolan Rushmore, a pauper who was quite young, had accidentally bumped into one of them, while he was stumbling over him, just trying to scavenge as much food as he could.
Though, this noble was, in actuality, a very low ranking one, who only had 1/248 of a Mortal Deity's golden bloodline. He was just a child born to a small sub-family of the great Lions & Stallion Family, and was in this castle due to 'personal' reasons. Any Mortal Deity that was not 'pure' was called a noble, be it male or female.
The moment Nolan, so hungry he could barely even walk, talk or think, bumped into his shoulder, the young noble pulled out his rapier and pierced his head.
"Fucking disgusting rat," He cried, "Go crawl back to whence you came, you disease-ridden beast!"
He kicked Nolan away from him, and he was flung several feet away, and the noble prepared to slice Nolan's head into two right then and there.
"…"
Blood continued to flow, down the stone path, and it trailed until it reached the gates of the castle. This was Mossgale Castle, owned by the Sacred Stonekeeper, and separate from the close nearby territory of the Drylands.
Nolan laid there on the ground, his heart faintly beating, while other people came to stare.
"To think that the bastard child of a sub-family would do something like this!"
"I can't believe he would do something so cruel, as to kill a lowly pauper!"
"I shall be reporting this to the castle lord, immediately!"
"Shut the fuck up!" The bastard child in question yelled, consumed in rage.
"He should think of it like a blessing, to be killed by me!"
It was true that since he was a bastard child of a sub-family, the lord of the castle couldn't care less about him, but that also meant that do could anything in the world. Even if that meant attempting to kill a pauper in broad daylight.
"…"
Nolan reached into the inner pockets of his ragged and tattered clothes, and pulled out a runeblade, a sickle. A rune blade that he had managed to craft all by himself, because of how he knew how to identify, decipher and use runes, ever since he woke up in this land, without any of his memories.
It took all of his strength to lunge at the Noble, and with the sickle, imbued with the power of Netherfire, a powerful, intense black flame, he almost managed to cut off the noble's head. If only he was more proficient in wielding weapons. The crowd of people, peasants and Nobles alike, bore witness to the pauper's attack, aiming to slice through the noble's neck.
"…Pathetic!" The young noble exclaimed, "You want to kill me, with only this amount of skill?! Ahahaha!"
"Guards!"
A few moments later, the guards arrived, and Rowan was immediately dragged away to be imprisoned by the knights, while the crowd chuckled for a little while and left to attend to their own businesses.
==
Rowan had found himself in a terrible situation now. He was thrown into a cellar, and a tiny crumble of stale bread was thrown into his cellar almost every hour. He was also now shackled. In rusty chains too.
But, at least he had some food to eat.
"…They can't take the sickle away from me…"
"So they stripped me instead, and embedded the sickle into the part of my back which I cannot reach."
"I wonder why... I'm just a lowly pauper, yet I'm always treated like this."
"…I was lucky that no one's blood was shed except mine. I would've turned into a demon again."
What Nolan was saying, was that ever since he awoke in this land without any of his memories, he always had the sickle, and the ability to turn into a demon. All the information he could find from others, before he eventually became what he is now, was that he was a Soulless.
Soulless, are beings who have fused with demons, and they are walking corpses, used as nourishment for the demon fused with them. But somehow, a peculiar rune that someone had placed on his heart had sealed the demon away, and its power could only be unleashed again with bloodshed.
He could not feel emotion, nor pain. The side effects of technically being a half-demon, a Soulless.
"…The food is nice, at least."
The small piece of stale bread that lay right in front of him was the only thing he could eat, but it was far, far better than eating horse-droppings.
"But, I don't like this place at all. Its darkness encroaches upon me. I'd much prefer being a wanderer."
He began to speak in an arcane language, since, one of the only ways to summon or create a Rune without the help of the hands was through saying it in one of the eight arcane languages. Though, he didn't really know much about the arcane languages, and was only taught how to summon Separation and Curse Runes.
Soon enough, a rune was engraved into the ground though the magic words he had spoken, and with the snap of his fingers, the ground opened up and it closed back up again.
"Good."
"Now, I just need a key to break these accursed shackles. If only it wasn't made of Archaic Metal."