While walking down the streets of modern day London, the person started his internal monologue.
—My name is William. Age 20.
—I used to live in Germany with my mom. But after she married an English man, me and her moved to England.
—It's been half a decade since i've been living in this country.
While talking to himself, he was filled with dissatisfaction and grim feeling living in a new land away from his home in Germany.
Ever since he was a child, he hated her mother for destroying their family relationship. This filled William with feelings of abandonment and neglect that further contributed to his deteriorated mental health.
Three years ago, he left his home because of consistent abuse of his new step-father and neglecting mother who always saw him as a burden.
He also dropped out of high school. Though he had good grades and was especially good at sports. But there, nobody liked him because of his depressed and antisocial personality. Except for one girl whom he does not remember her name but she was always kind to her. She was the reason, he always did his best in academics and participated in sports.
On one day he found her missing. Weeks pass by. She never came to school. After sometime, she was all over the television news . She committed sucide .
Reason: bullying and abuse.
The News stated, ''Girl apparently younger, commuted sucide. Now the investigation has been conducted by authorities to investigate the case along with prime suspects, her legal guardians 'aka' her uncle and aunt along with her few classmates. ''
After hearing the news, William was broken from inside out.
He did not cry. He felt nothing. While looking down, his mind mumbled from thought to thought of his moments with her.
Her smile and her positive attitude he saw when he first met her. '' Her kindness, stubbornness, her smile, her positive outlook in life was it all a lie ?'' , he wondered.
He then said,
—why?
Aside from one word he said nothing.
Three years after that incident, he left home and dropped of his high school before graduating.
He started living on the streets and worked as a street artist to earn a living.
His paintings rarely sold. He resorted to stealing and begging when he desperately needed money to fill his stomach.
He never considered going back to his parents because he knew, he would never be treated well while living with them.
Mother who destroyed her original family and stepfather who often beat William with belt and punches whenever he felt like it.
Now back to present, while walking down the streets of London. He saw a boy, he looked young. ''About 13 maybe'' he wondered.
He also thought,
—This place is not for kids like him.
—But who am I to care.
—Streets these days are filled with knife stabbers.
—But as long as I mind my own business, I don't have to worry about that.
Before William could react, that same boy stabbed his stomach with his butterfly knife.
The knife was sharp.
The boy stabbed him 12 times in the same spot and then proceeded to slash his throt.
Blood gushed from his throt and stomach like a never ending stream of red liquid.
William wanted to screm hard but his already slashed throt would not allow him to.
He slowly fell down while supporting his back on the street wall and sat on the ground with his legs spread. That slasher kid also sat down while looking at his dying face.
With a smile on slasher kid's face,
He said,
—I love seeing you beggers die.
—With this you are the third one this year.
William while on his last breath, saw everything in slow motion. At first he felt unimaginable pain and fear after being stabbed and seeing a young kid smile while he was slowly dying. But now all the pain was gone. Single second felt like lifetime.
After some time everything went black in his eyes. William started seeing vision of a meaning figure covered in black clothes and a hood holding a head of a dead man with the expression of fear and shock on its face.
He also saw visions of dead dismembered bodies scattered in a ditch inside a deep gloomy forest covered in fog and there was nightime also.
Among the dismembered dead bodies he saw a person who looked exactly like him but with long messy hair and blood covered grimy clothes.
That person looked as if he died of shock and pain. William also wondered.
Above the ditch he again saw that menecing figure covered in black and that same person threw the head into the ditch and everything went black again.
After seeing the visions of such horror, William wondered with gloomy voice ,
—If what I saw was hell then that Menecing figure covered in black must be the Grim Reeper who has come to take his soul away.
He accepted his fate while saying this.
At the same he heard strange faint voice that stated,
—Indeed.
After hearing those words, William quickly opened his eyes while screaming.
He then found himself in that same land of what he saw visions before. He now the same person who looked looked like him in the visions before dying.
He screamed,
—ahhhhhhhhhhhh.
"Where am I? ", he wondered.
He calmed himself down, looked at his surroundings and thinks, "it must be a place where dead resdes''.
Without thinking much afterwards. He stood up and climbed the pit to get out of it filled with dead. Then he started walking.
Hours go by, sun rises and he sees the edge of a village. William was in state of extreme light headedness similar to someone overloading a drug some sorts.
He saw a bunch of small shops and people doing their jobs. Children playing together on the side of the road and bunch of people who wore armour patrolling the area. Everything seemed lively.
For William what seemed odd was the medieval style infrastructure of the village and there were demi-humans and people with white hair, tan skin and body that of a tall stature almost ten feet above. There were normal humans also but wasn't enough to convince him that it wasn't the land of the dead.
Now the narrative shifts to an old tavern in that same village. Inside that tavern, there is a man with silver hair wearing a silver chestplate with silver lightning bolt tattoo on the left side of his neck and a long silver looking sword by his side.
His appearence is that of a grown man with sharp jawline and light stubble beard.
That same person with silver hair asks the tavern owner to give him some booze to drink with carefree voice.
The tavern owner with annoyed face asks him to leave and said " isn't it the deauty of the the knight to do their job of protecting the kingdom"?
Man with silver hair brushed the question off and told him "it doesn't matter others are good enough so don't worry".
With enough pressure, tavern owner made him leave.
While waking silver haired man senses, there is some commotion going on near village border. So he decides to go and look what's going on there.
After arriving there, he saw bunch of guards harassing a already injured guy. He goes there and orders them to stop but the guards told him to back off and said, this person is a suspicious fellow who was resisting during arrest so that's why they were doing this.
(The injured man was William. )
He again asks the guards to stop but this time guard felt cold sensation and strong urge to follow his owders to stop. The guards were terrified from what they felt as a brief glimpse of death before being pulled out after following his owders out of instinct.
He then asks the guards to take him to the village doctor to treat his injuries, wait for him until he regains consciousness and ask him questions regarding his identity and if he knows about 'Azatoth Worshipers' or anything he knows about them.
Guards shout,
—Yes sir!!.
After they proceeds to go complete their objective.
At the same time while looking at them. He talks to someone telepathically by keeping his right palm on his ear and voice on the other side says,
—It's been five months and we still have no lead on these rats.
—If this mysterious guy really knows about them then the kingdom's efforts to locate them and eradicate them might become possible.
After hearing this he replies, "let's hope it does and we really have no other choice but to get our clues through the wind".
After completing his sentence, he breaks his telepathic link and wonders,
—All I need is the lead and the greatest threat to the whole kingdom of Dragonia would be breeze to me.
—Only if.....
// (Chapter one ends here.) //