I see the scene of that horrid day everytime I close my eyes. I've never forgotten. Not even for a second, not even when I blink, even though the world before me when I lie awake is almost as equally nightmarish—unresting in every single passing moment.
The smell, the feeling, the screams before the silence, and the blood on my hands. I could paint a clear picture of it all even now. And maybe if I did that and stared at it, at least the darkness I see when I close my eyes would line-up with what I'll witness when I pry them back open again.
I can remember it so vividly.
Apollo's Sun hung low, casting tall shadows as far as its glowing hot arms could reach. And I was but a boy with a heart kind and warm, forced to play the villain, holding my weapon in bloodlust as I introduced myself.
"I am Diablo, the Demon Lord! Hear my battle cry!" I swing my stick in the air and let out a screech.
"Fret not, my comrades. With our combined strength, and with the purpose we share as the protectors of Mundos, we will fell this wretched monstrosity of a demon!" Gerald and the other kids charge in, advancing towards me while all armed with their own respective sticks too.
This is how we spent the latter part of our childhood. We would all go straight to the forest when the skies turned orange, and recreate the stories we would be told by the village teachers. Fantastical made-up parodies of the actual lore behind our magical world.
We'd always draw lots on who the bad guys would be. And I was the unlucky one that day. I really was.
We started to run back home after having a few bouts with our wooden blades, as the skies shined their most vibrant, in time for dinner. I was eagerly anticipating the moment I would show my younger sister another newly acquired battle scar, in hopes of being looked up to once more as her strong elder brother.
In the lead, Gerald was already bragging about victory. But I was clever for my age, and when it came to that final stretch at the bridge, I finally started running as fast as I could.
Gerald was exhausted from maintaining the lead for so long, it did not even take me a second to catch up and to pass him.
You know that satisfying part before a rejoice of happiness? When you close your eyes first before opening them back up and pumping your fist in the air in a moment of triumph? My body instinctively planned to do just that as I crossed the bridge first, only before I got even a chance to pump my fist and all, my eyes widened after opening, and I froze before I could even speak.
I should have seen it coming.
I should have seen it coming.
I should have seen it coming.
Before I could even think, my feet came to life on their own. Gerald and the others yelled for me, but my feet carried me through the corpses, through the fire, and through the screams before the silence that still ring out through my head even in the most quiet moments of Luna's Moon even now.
The village was in chaos. Flames. Death. I ran to my home in desperate hope.
Someone already took the liberty of opening our door for me when I got there.
And whoever they were, they were messy guests. Leaving red trails all over our home.
And in an instant, I found them there. Waiting patiently for my return so that we could all have supper together.
The smell. The feeling. The blood on my hands as I rushed to grab them, violently shaking their dead bodies in a childish belief that it was all just one elaborate joke gone too far.
But the punchline never came. And I crouched down in their blood, adding onto the pool of crimson at my knees as tears escaped my eyes and dripped down.
The floorboards creaked behind me, and I darted my head to the sound. The first thing I saw through my foggy watery eyes was the shining dagger of a cloaked figure standing at the door of my bedroom. I sprung up as fast as my eyes widened, and tried to run out.
But the sound of the creaking slowly followed behind me. And as I inched to the already-opened door, fire blocked my way out of the blue. There was nowhere left to escape, and as the creaks grew closer and louder, I turned my head back to meet my eyes with the figure once more, slowly approaching me, weapon-in-hand. I saw a mark on their cloak that I did not notice before then. A single X on its left chest.
"If I survive this, I'll kill you!" I yelled out, as I engraved the mark on their cloak in my mind, never to forget it. Vengeance. It overtook my heart, and I was filled with so much rage and anger.
I have to survive. I have to survive. I have to survive.
Time slowed down soon after. And I hesitated for a split second, but I gathered myself and I looked back at the fire again. And just like before, I moved without thinking. I hunched low and gathered all my strength in my legs.
"Stop!" A voice from behind said, no doubt the cloaked figure.
But I did not listen, and I planted my foot on the floorboards, before it left it, as fast as it hit the ground. I leaped forward and closed my eyes.
Heat. Blistering heat. Fire wrapping around me so much that it turned my skin black, and igniting my clothes for an even more passionate embrace.
What lied beyond the flames, I moved like I did not care about it. If death was going to meet me before I landed or after.
Agony. Unrelenting pain that circulated through me. My body hit the dirt. And I screamed, convulsed and rolled. The orange hairs eating away at me, exposing what lied behind my skin.
And then, water. Pouring over me, someone who was on the brink of death. With steam being the only remnants of the dreaded fires that laid torture on every sensory fiber I had in me.
My heart paced. But my voice grew weak as I continued to moan in this pulsating pain. Narrow became my vision, like a dark tunnel was placed around my eyes.
A yellow light blinded me. And then, darkness. The pain stopped. And I felt my scorched body repair itself. Tissue attaching back again to tissue. Fibers of myself intertwining with one another once more.
As this was happening though, I could not help but be swallowed by the dark. And the world I see whenever I close my eyes opened itself up to me for the very first time then.
The smell, the feeling, the screams before the silence, and the blood on my hands.
I should have seen it coming.
I should have seen it coming.
I should have seen it coming.
The rumors of a dark troop of Beloveds that hailed to the Dark God Neros emerging. My Mother telling me not to go to the forest for that day so that I could help her prepare our food.
Maybe I could have helped. Maybe I could have saved them. But Chronos is a cold God. And time cannot be reversed.
The bodies I ran through only for me to behold the sight of the people I cherished soaked in red. And the fire that ate away at my skin, tearing through it after charring it black.
A recurring nightmare where I get to relive it all back again that comes to me wherever I go, no matter when.
I lost everything then. And no more was the moment where I would pump my fist in the air and rejoice in victory and triumph. No more it was, truly.
I woke up in a forest near Lyndara soon after, but I did not know this at the time. It was morning, and there was no one else but I, the trees, and the wilderness.
Whoever helped me then, carried me to that spot, I do not know even today. But may Neros have claimed my soul then and put me through the Eternal Hell if I had not made use of this second chance.