Chapter 1: Prologue

Only the unbearable smell of burnt flesh floated in the air. It seeped into his throat and lungs, leaving an acrid taste of ash in his mouth. So much so that he was suffocating. He moved slowly, searching for some fresh air, but the pain swept through him immediately. Blood was seeping out of his body, smearing his torn clothes and sticking to his skin. It tinted the grass red and soaked the earth and the roots.

The sounds came to him in a distant, muffled way. But amidst the shouting, he still heard footsteps approaching. They were heavy and accompanied by metallic ringing. A weight suddenly rested on his chest, presumably to make sure he couldn't move, and a faint moan escaped him.

"This one is alive! With some care, we can do something about him.”

Fear gripped his heart, and his nausea suddenly returned even more intense than before. He tried to protest, to struggle harder, forgetting for a moment the pain that governed every part of his body. He let out a low growl, but only got a brief laugh in response.

“Very well. Take him.”

It was another, more authoritative voice. Someone picked him up bluntly, but he no longer possessed the strength to rebel. He barely opened his eyes. Everything around him seemed blurry. The forms he could hardly distinguish seemed to multiply. He gasped as his gaze fell on a still-warm corpse.

“Advance!”

He collapsed. His legs couldn't carry him. A tear rolled down his cheek, leaving a long reddish trail as it mingled with the blood. A taste of bile invaded his mouth, and a strange sound escaped him, halfway between sobbing and retching.

“Get up!”

He could not. Everything he knew, everything he cherished, disappeared in blood and flames. His family was no more. Neither was his village. A blade slipped out of its sheath, but he didn't care anymore. A sharp pain exploded in his head as the sword's pommel hit his temple. A cry escaped him, and a black veil obscured his view.

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