Bright fire and thick, black smoke inundated the chamber of a mid-sized home. The quarters was flooded with the cry of an infant that was a shrill, piercing plea for salvation. A woman was cowering against the western wall, huddling her young while struggling to maintain a sense of composure. Indeed she couldn't. Her entire life had gone up in flames. There was left to her no home, no husband, no lover, no soulmate that vowed life together, no father of their only son. The token of their love was the only memento she possessed to remember him by, yet even with that tiny head pressed against her bosom, her sanity was crumbling.

 Tongues of fire at the walls and soon enough, a portion of the ceiling caved in. Silver rays of moonlight penetrated through the gloom only to land on the surface of a skeletal visage, a demon whose skull face seemed to sneer at the sobbing mother.

The tip of his golden blade was an animated thing, bleeding with the dripping blood of the slain and pulsing as it eerily reflected the flames that swam up the walls. Tiny embers fell like dancing speckles of light, illuminating this haunting night that could never be forgotten. She squealed; the demon began to step in her direction. With a bitter sob, she watched as the dead body of her lover was consumed by the insatiable mouth of hell. There was no sympathy in that grim countenance of the skull.

By god! Her son gripped at her golden hair and she became filled with all the strength and courage of the ancients who communed with the heavenly host. Those gleaming brown eyes of her child had pierced her soul and she came to the realization that this could not be the end. Her child could not die here, not while she yet lived. 

With all the cunning and desperation of trapped mice, she picked up an ornamental box that was to her side at an arm's distance and hurled it at the ceiling. A sudden shower of scorched wood and material fell upon the demon, momentarily stunning him. She used this lapse of time to pick up her child and run outside the house, running faster than any fleetfooted deer past obstacles and men who attempted to halt her escape. 

A bevy of spears were hurled up, eclipsing the moon, and all were aimed at the woman and her child. The fiend stepped out the smoldering home, appearing like a true figure out of hell and waved his hand fiercely at his companions. Their next wave of assault was stayed and he watched as a spear scoured the bare arm of the woman, the others failing to achieve their fatal purpose.

He nodded and hitched himself up the saddle of his steed, a colossal dog with sharp, pointed ears that towered above the medium sized host that lingered behind the two. They had begun a chase with the aim of personally killing those two fugitives. The streets through which the beast and its rider sped through were quiet, eerily silent like the roads of ancient cities lost to time. No one would dare impede this hellspawn and his beast. Only his heart presented some protest, but such weak complaints could never match the cause for which he killed. He had to. He had to kill tonight, else his only loved one would die.

He was harried by an internal harangue, alluding to his intrinsic cowardice. There existed conflict in his hollow heart wherein small whispers and murmurs became a non-stop fusillade that assaulted his inner man. He could stop tonight. He could choose not to kill and instead aim his gilded edge at the true worker of inquity, that figure that loomed over his life as his adoptive father. 

Still, he rode. His mammoth beast traveled with an astonishing celerity and by all means, they should've overtaken the fugitives by now but hadn't. It was a strange circumstance to consider since the mother was running barefoot, laden with a burden in her arms. Mayhap a god mingled in, paving the way of escape for the pair? Nonsense! Why should their petitions be answered when his were ignored?!

 The rider and his monstrous steed hurried past a stone arc which function served to demarcate the boundary of this town. In a matter of moments, this pair met the sandy floor of a desert. It was here that he halted and finally caught a glimpse of the mother and child duo. She ran and continued running even after she stumbled and hit her head against a rock, twisting her body to safeguard the child in her arms from a deadly impact. 

There was a flash of admiration he held toward her. Something about her desperate attempts to save her son inspired him.

He heard the shrieks of the fiends that stalk the night. Somewhere, above this nighted sky  stalked those beings of macabre nightmares, the Vulturemen. Why should he stain his hands any longer, tonight? he asked himself. Why not let those monsters tear up his prey? But what if they don't? 

His hand worked free a dagger holstered on his thigh and as he lifted his fingers to dart it at the woman, a miracle happened. He stopped; his killing intention was staunched. A simple stare was all it took. The child the woman carried had locked eyes with him, piercing his soul. In that fleeting instant, he was reminded of himself, of that sorrowful, piteous, and confused look in his eyes when he was dealt with a similar fate. He was reminded of the day the draconian ruler stepped inside his home and tore asunder his life. He grunted.

This wouldn't have been the first time he had transgressed, slaughtering both mother and young alike without discrimination. He had tinged his hands in the blood of the innocent without hiccup before. But indeed, tonight he could not. Those eyes, so much like his own, shot arrows alight with bright coals at his heart. When he questioned again his inability to act despite his talent of suppressing any outrage of conscience, there was left to him no answer. It was an inexplicable circumstance.

His eyes swept the land ahead of the pair of fugitives; only more and more of these grains of sand colored silver by the moonlight... There was no way they could escape this desert. There was no way possible those now fleeing would ever see another phase of the moon. Assuredly they would fall captive to the arid, insufferable heat of the desert if not to one of its dooms, one of its wicked children by morning.

He shook his head, telling himself they will die even if he let them flee for now. With a sudden burst of movement, he flung his ebon locks over his shoulder. There awaited him another town to visit. There awaited another life to exterminate, and at his marble tower awaited his sister, unaware of his bloody acts.

...
A hot wind blew across his face and he came to, enveloped by a velvety darkness.

Myungsoo gasped and with a start jumped to his feet only to fall back down. His shattered pelvis failed to bear his weight. Where was he? In this murky place of dank conditions and musky smells, he was afforded no clear vision. He could see neither his hands nor the boundaries of the surface upon which he kneeled.

The only thing he was aware of was that this weird and odd space moved, squirmed with contractions as if breathing with life. His eyes roved this strange enclosure for any clue as to his location, eventually witnessing a weird glistening that presented an aspect of wetness to this alien realm. Was he in hell? This was not the hell he earlier visited when the ball of light rescued him. Perhaps another, deeper level of it?

He didn't know. There were many things he didn't know, such as why he dreamed when he should be dead. Do those dead dream in the same manner as those alive? 

 "Myungeun," he cried, "Where am I?"

 This peculiar space rolled about and he was tossed like a fish caught in a whirlpool. A foul liquid soaked his hair and body, stinging like poison at his wounds. During the weird spasms of this dimension, there was little he could do except grasp at anything he could cling to as the severity of the quakes lessened. As the tumult ceased, he rested with his back leaned against a soft and fleshy wall that was covered with slime.

His respite was abruptly cut off when, from outside, a thunderous roar echoed. It was a very distinct and familiar disturbance that could only be associated with the giant reptile he had earlier fought. In that sudden moment he figured out where he now was. He was in the belly of the beast.

His hand was quick to remember the dagger still stored on his body; brutal, savage instinct always supersedes any train of thought. The sharp edge was stabbed into the wall, and while he might've hoped to shove it to its hilt and tear open a way of escape, his hand recoiled and the dagger was flung into the air. 

 "What the- My strength!"

A hot air, stomach gasses, inundated the space in which he sat. His mouth was dry and he was left with a shame, knowing he would keel over and die not to talons, flash of steel, or even magic, but to the workings of natural digestion. He wagged his head in full disapproval and slammed his fists into the stomach walls.

In this still moment of tension, the familiar voice resumed its speech.

 "Not yet. Not yet are you made ready, but are still stiffnecked. Calloused is your heart and long is the litany of your sins which you fail to admit."

 "What?!" Myungsoo demanded, his face twisting in unhindered rage, "I know my sins, they are many! But I did it for my sister's sake, for her who you failed to save!"

 "You know not child. Child whose power is but pride, pride which I detest. As you are, you cannot fulfill my purposes. You have yet to discover the depth and breadth of which I have been made to suffer..."

 Myungsoo scrambled up, furious at this farce. How could god suffer?! In light of his own torment, how could this deity bring up even a notion of supposed affliction when he could've saved his people from their own actual torment? There was an imbalance here.

 "What about me?! You took away my family, my friends, and just a month ago you took my only reason for living! Dare you speak about your pain?! And mines?!"

 "I am aware. But are you? Can you say you know the mind of god who sustains the righteous and the evil alike? Think you that I hold my tears at the the fall of man- whom I created as reflections of mine image and whom I love as mine own children though they are but men and I, god? men who have fallen and bowed to those things which are not, but are lesser things that cannot compare to I, the one attired in white?"

 Thunder cracked in the belly of the beast, interrupting Myungsoo's thoughts. He dropped to his knees and began again to physically demonstrate his wrath by pounding at the stomach floor.

 "Open your eyes, your heart and submit to me. True is what your sages have said that all that remains for man is to submit to heaven's yoke."

Myungsoo snapped his head side to side. "Why god? Why did you forget us? My eyes were always opened but you never showed yourself. You forgot us!"  

 "It was your people that forgot me. Not once have any strayed from my mind. But now ready yourself. For I will make you feel the heartache of god and this pain which I will inflict upon you was conceived by your own deeds. At the end of the age, you will call out to me and I will answer."

 Myungsoo felt a sleep come upon him, his body yielding to a slumbrous loss of energy. In a second his eyes were closed and then opened again, awakened to see a bright sun hanging in the air. It had begun. 

He was now not residing inside some gut of a dragon, but outside, in a place familiar, yet vague. At his feet cried a brand new widow, his sword having emptied her husband of all his blood and guts.

Pieces of entrails, the odious scent of blood mingled with the buzzing of flies disturbed him. But why? This was only the past, except it was the present too. His body worked without command of his will and it felled the sobbing widow at his feet.

 "For my sister, to keep her alive," he heard himself say although he spoke no word.

 There was now a whirl of light and he was transported to a village. His leather-shod feet moved in the direction of the sun and rapped at a door, a throng of armored men behind him. The door was opened and he was first to step in and slay. It was a brutal bloodletting, the crimsom paint splashing against all faces inside the house and upon his skull helm.

 "For my sister, to keep her alive," was the refrain that sounded.

What is this? he asked within himself.

He was again into a flashing whirlpool of light and when the lights ceased, he sighted  a green expanse ahead of him. He was mounted atop his giant canine, trampling the grass beneath as it walked with a relaxed pace. Their next victim, their next assignment, was waiting at a short distance. Against a tree a youth was pressed, encumbered by a forest of pikes, all aimed at his throat. With a single nod of command, the lances shot through flesh and bone, the body falling before his leather-shod feet in a vague semblance of man, without a head above the shoulders.

Until this peculiar reliving of the event, this particular situation had, like all other instances in which he dealt death, been relegated to the dustheap of his personal history. It was a queer  occurrence he was encountering, a full tactile experience that transcended any sort of astral observation. Questing through all the reasons why he was subjected to such a strange happening failed to solve anything. It was while in the middle of his examinations that he was again moved to a location he ventured in times past.

He was more familiar with this certain memory than the ones prior. It was an abomination he was sent to expunge. It was the only case reported of a Sanritem mingling with those of this world, an Adamah slave. They had produced a child, a mix of two different bloods that went against the laws of nature.

He saw himself dismount his large behemoth, step onto a nighted street and stop before the house of a family, the family of a scholar who frequented the Sanritem libraries. There existed zero sign of remorse in his face that was hidden behind a skull helm. Without compunction, he ordered the house be set on fire. The smoldering flames began to consume the home and the culprit of the illegitimate union burst out the door, colliding before his unmoving body. The man was shoved back in and he followed.

By the time he stepped in, the fire had quickly begun to infiltrate the home through cracks in the walls and roof. He had invaded a private home much like a thief, and in the same vein, he stole a precious substance- the life of the man who fathered a bastard. He had fallen to a single clout that cracked his skull as he attempted to distract Myungsoo from killing his family.

The sword was then released from the scabbard and the golden edge made mince meat out of the fallen. It was a precaution to ensure he was indeed dead. His eyes were then redirected to the woman on the floor, huddling her child between her arms. Falling debris, caused by an object thrown at the crumbling ceiling, impeded him only for a minute.

A chase ensued out the door and this reliving of time finished when he assured himself that the two would die in the desert. 

Those eyes! Why must they keep disturbing me even now?!

He couldn't rest. Myungsoo relived each and every murder he committed, over and over again. He was sick. While at first he could claim to not be moved, it had begun to wear on him; he was no longer desensitized. Those wet noises of stomachs torn open, the cracking of bone, the grating of skulls, the shrills of the dying and laments of those whose own lives would next be snuffed out began to exhaust him. He had begun to hate his deeds. Myungeun, he kept telling himself, but her existence alone could not excuse him or halt these evil cycles.

It was an infinite loop. From the first to the last, all his killings were relived time and time again. If one of those slayings equaled a minute in existence, then he spent the equivalent of 1000 years reliving those slayings. His mind had become mush and he could no longer tell himself whether he existed or not, whether he was some bubble of imagination or actual figment of reality. Unreality, that vague chaotic black pool sludged his entire heart and mind. He lived only as a moan, his heart and mind fragmented, grinded into grains of dust. He was burning up, his charcoal body devoured by a relentless flame.

He was but a tiny light, a whim which partook of existence at the behest of a higher decree. At any point he could drift into the ether, merge with it. At any point he could fade away without objection. What he was and what he would be, his past deeds and future aspirations were lost to a void, a galaxy of forgetfulness. 

The fated moment happened, the yearning of heaven was fulfilled:

A pained groan, "Nesher save me..."

In a streak of blinding light, the snapping of thunder, he was hurled out the belly of the beast, vomited out from the womb. He was a feeble child that laid on the sands, legs curled up, huddled against his , head tucked in and entirely covered in slime and gasping for air. There was a lack of intelligence, the absence of an ego: his mind, a blank canvas, white and unstained by his colors.

A nimbus glow hovered in the blue skies, at first like the outline of a man in white armor and then shifting to resemble a bird in mid-flight.  "Now empty, you are fit to be my vessel. I will endow you with some of my strength at the accorded time and you will do that which I send you to do. You can do nothing of yourself but are entirely in need of me."

 Myungsoo twitched, struggling to even sit up, confused and baffled by all- by the desert sands, the azure sky and the light which, like a sheet, covered all. Then, slowly, memories came drifting in. Who he was, who he wished to be and who he is: all was made known to him. Simply put, he was himself again, only not himself again. The consequence of an eternity spent in a hell wrought by his own hands had drained his inner man of any protest against providence.

The sum result was a man wholly conscious of his standing, that he lived at the mercy of god who had saved him; he lived and moved only because he was willed to live and move. His vision was quaking, unsure of the sights around him, whether they existed in thought or were of physical bearing. His hand sifted the sand by his side and his eyes observed with utmost scrutiny the way it fell, grain after grain to the ground.

 "Let us be one. Your mind, united with mine: a consummate expression of love. Then you will know greatness. There is much treasure in being divested of all... Now join the other and you chosen two will fulfill your purpose."

 Myungsoo closed his eyes, shielding them from the luminosity of heaven and when they reopened, he was stunned, yet not entirely, to see himself leaning against a craggy wall in the Cave of Power. It was dark, a cold accompanying the nightly winds that moaned outside.

Dongwoo was already there, on his knees, murmuring some language that he was aware of. He heard his name spoken in those soft, almost melodic whispers of the prayer. He sighed, wondering if he had traversed a similar route, lived a similar experience as he had atop the mount. Then an involuntary thought rose up, of that particular dream he had dreamt and that memory he had relived, of that piercing stare that had until that point been submerged into the waters of everyday happenings. While his sister lived and himself was occupied with his evil charge, the commands of his adoptive father, he had no time to meditate on trivial things...

Now, there was no vague triviality, but a meaning this pondering was imbued with. He kept staring at Dongwoo's back, all the while brooding. Then those quiet words ceased and Dongwoo rose to his feet, twisting his head around in study of his home. Their eyes met, squarely as if in a mystic trance. Myungsoo gasped, those eyes of his alight with some weird enlightenment he could not thoroughly assess. He felt a connection with Dongwoo, a mysterious relation. 

 "Myungsoo," he cried out as he dashed to him.

 His mind was muddled with ambiguity and focus all at once. He was desperately trying to lift himself off his haunches but lacked the strength. His head swayed side to side, "I can't stand up," he said in a confused, timid voice.

 "That's fine, just stay seated," Dongwoo said, now hunching to ascertain his condition. His eyes roved over the flesh wounds and various bruises that spread across his body. "Did you fight a wicked reptile also?"

 "A dragon," he began as he trailed off. Now more closer to him, with their eyes locked, he made a connection that mayhap, before their meeting in the desert, the two had met as if in a past life or in an era lost to remembrance. 

 "I couldn't kill it but Nesher descended upon me like a shadow and I was given ability to slay it. A terrible blast like a strong east wind shot from my palms and it was torn to pieces. "

 Myungsoo looked blankly at him. His watery mind still attempting to piece together an unknown puzzle. It seemed both had faced a dragon, possibly the two-headed dragon divided in two- who could know? What was clear was how the outcomes were of two polarizing opposites. Dongwoo still seemed bright, if not b with an indisputable sense of joy and a never-ending hope. Contrariwise, he was a mess, coming apart at the seams with the notion that he was a fickle thing, only alive because god willed for it.

 "Let's get up and get some fresh air," Dongwoo chimed.

 "I- I can't."

 Furling his brows, his hazel eyes glanced at him, at those trembling hands that fell upon his hip. Something was awry. Kneeling, he laid his hands over the area and asked, "Is this where it's hurting?"

 "Yes, but why?"

 He smiled, "Nesher told me you would come out a different person." From his hands that laid over the shattered pelvis, a bright light began to shine. 

Myungsoo gasped in terror, the intense luminosity recalled the light that defined the transition between slayings he had relived. When it stopped, there was no longer a pain that throbbed. His mouth was agape, vision affixed to the one at his side. What did this mean? It was obvious to him. He was no mere Adamah, but was like those Sanritem who worked wonders with their intrinsic talent of magic.

 "Stand up and walk," he told him with a warm grin.

When he, like a newborn fawn, got up on clumsy legs, he staggered but caught himself with his back against the wall. Dongwoo extended a hand but he couldn't take it. It wasn't out of pride that he refused it but out of something like shock. As his vision lingered on him, he gulped his spit, aware of a mystery that was being solved. His eyes possessed a quality that was like a child's, innocent and suggestive of a need for relationship. Those wondrous orbs gleamed with a mystical light and he finally solved the question: he was the boy whose stare penetrated his heart long ago. 

A wind whisked his hair and the divine utterance sounded again, interrupting his thoughts.

 "Take your leave. This war against Oscuridaon is my war, but you will fight it. It is by my spirit that I will claim victory, not the pride of men. No, not steel, nor the legs of blooded stallions, wheels of chariots, twang of bow or machine of the past. You will fight for me, but the battle will fail to be conventional when I dip my sword in the blood of that demon king. All the sufferings of mine people I have known and have heeded their cry. Their deaths are precious to me. They will be avenged."

The hush of night followed the voice. There was no longer a loss of energy with their heads forcibly bowed to the ground when being made receptive to the heavenly transmission. No, not anymore, and in the range of their limited minds, they may have thought that it was because they now stood on the same ground where god walked. No longer were they bound by the banal and the blasphemous but were redeemed by all that is holy, now taking their rightful place as partakers of heavenly substances. 

Myungsoo rubbed his face, an eye carefully scanning Dongwoo who stood at the mouth of the cave. He was sweating from guilt over his hidden knowledge and though he knew he would soon have to confess his sin to achieve a more thorough atonement and serene state of mind, he settled to do it once the war would end. Much was ahead of them. 

Dongwoo stared back to which he flinched and flung his eyes to randomly stare about the cave. Naturally, they were drawn to the throne where his father once sat. He sighed with longing. As he approached it, the small golden box caught his eye again, laying next to a pile of animal bones he earlier missed. What enigma this box presented was beyond his ken. He swore he left it home, at least in the place he once knew as home, the marble tower. Yet, here it was, gleaming like a forgotten jewel.

As he inclined himself to pick it up Dongwoo came by and with a gentle kick, indicated the bones.

 "I collected these. You want one?"

 "No, I'm fine," he said, discreetly trying to avert his gaze.

 "Okay, but that box is mine. It's among the few things I cherish. I learned much from it. My mother taught me much from it."

 He groaned, guilty, and with the secret intention to perhaps one day atone himself, said, "She raised you well..."

 Dongwoo didn't hear him but acutely noticed the absence of a giant sword sticking off his back.  "Was your sword swallowed by the dragon?"

 "No," he responded with his hands the golden box. "It shattered." He regarded his earlier comment was missed. All the better for him, he waged. He had immediately regretted saying it, not wanting to stir some awkward air between the two. Already he possessed a heavy heart from realizing he had been traveling all along with a person he had made an orphan, there was no need to have the person realize that too, at least not yet.

A pat on the back and Dongwoo pulled him along by the arm, measuring his pace to match his companion's slow steps.  "Let's go get that sword you stuck into the ground earlier. You can't fight without a sword."

"Dongwoo," he said, pausing his strides, cognizant of a fact which may disturb his partner. "I was chosen as the sword by Nesher, meaning there will be blood shed. You know that, right? Are you fine with, " he deviated from his suggestion that he would intentionally shed blood. He couldn't guess why he abruptly needed to proffer up the reminder, only certain that he had to in fact do it although he was hesitant to fulfill this urge.

 "I know. But... I cannot fathom the depths of Nesher's thoughts. I will simply trust in him, that at the end, war and evil will indeed cease."

 "Are you truly at peace?" Myungsoo cut in with a haste. "How about when you killed Amahr or- the murderer who killed your father?"

 "All is forgiven, I believe. All will be made well by heaven," he said with uncertain eyes, doubtful if he was truly at one with his words, devoid of any quiet hypocrisy.