Deluge of Despair
The Rain's Execution
Drip. Drip. Drip. The rain lashed Terma village like a mad executioner, each drop a hammerblow on the coffin of what remained. Echoes splintered through the skeletal wooden walls, a dying heartbeat in a nightmare. The gutters, choked with rot and forgotten dreams, spewed black water like severed veins. Far across the belly of the sky, thunder growled—a famished beast denied its feast. And the wind: it screamed. It clawed. It peeled the skin off the night.
In this drowning dark, a figure staggered. Yutsuki Kazama. His steps were prayers to a god that wouldn't listen. Cuts laced his torso like wicked smiles, his shirt a sodden rag glued to his ribs. Warm blood trickled, mingling with the icy baptism, and he bit his tongue till the copper taste flooded his mouth. The pain wouldn't relent. His pupils swam in a red haze. His legs, columns of broken twigs, finally splintered. _Thud._ He hit the flood—a crimson soup of himself—and lay there, a discarded thing.
The storm didn't care. It pounded on, each droplet a shard piercing his numb skin. Cold seeped into his marrow, and his cracked lips shaped a whisper, lost to the deluge:
"I'll kill you, Mitsuki."
The rain swallowed the words. He was a whisper in hell.The Gallows in Memory
_[Flashbacks: Terma village, as the pink haze surrendered to the stars.]_
A teen strides, fists buried in pockets, a moth flapping unease in his chest. Streets buzz—the ordinary hum of a village that doesn't know its throat is cut. Then: the clouds ulcerate. A metallic tang fills the air. He breaks into a sprint, dread uncoiling like a whip.
"Mom…Dad, please be safe!"
[Kazama estate. Abattoir of dreams.]
Garbage-strewn streets, buildings gnawed by fire, bodies heaped like trash. Yutsuki bursts through the skeletal gate, groceries tumbling, and beholds the scaffold. His parents hang limp, loops cruel around their necks. The wind toys with his mother's haira mocking caress. Her face, wachsfigure frozen in a lie of peace, her skin the cold gray of things long dead.
He crumps to his knees, forehead grawling the mud. The sobs aren't histhey're the earth's.
"Why! Why! Why did you leave me!"
A voice behind, colder than the rain spoke drawing his attention, he quickly recognize it as his elder brother, "Why do you mourn for those who abandoned you?" Mitsuki. His brother. The knife in the dark.
"You! You did this—why?!"
"Saving this village. Including you. Be thankful."
"Thankful?! You slaughtered them." His voice shatters. The bremirai seal on his chest pulses malignant, like a tumor fed by wrath. His irises burn a switch flipped.
He lunges. Fires blind him. _Punches rain. Kicks scream. Slaps echo. Mitsuki parries without breath, a god playing a mortal."Small and weak. I wish I could make this easier."
A touch. A cripple. Yutsuki crashes, face in the filth, a grawling slash across his gut. The last thing he hears, a winter whisper:
"See you soon, bro'. Get stronger."
Mitsuki evaporates. The night inherits the corpse.
[Present. The tempest refuses mercy.]
Yutsuki's pupils shrink in a swirling vortex. A faceless shadow bends, an umbrella a useless canopy against the maelstrom. A hand extends—anchor or shroud? He grabs it. The world narrows. Blackness feasts.
[The Emissaries of Judgment Jyutu high. Moonlit dread.]
Two figures in white robes crystallize before Grandmaster Enzo and Chun-yin. Their silence sculpts the air into granite. Chun-yin's spine crawls the unspoken weight of executioners.
"What do you people want?" Enzo's voice pludes, though he knows the answer.
"I am Shea Castilian. This is Reyna Sherman. We come from the church's blade,in Italy. We excise what is unclean in Tokyo. If your soccerers meddle…they die. Without passion."
Chun-yin's fingers twitch, nails biting palms. Enzo's grip restrains her—a hawk tethered.
"We aren't pawns. Tell them to stand down. We'll handle thing's from now on."
"Very well," Enzo says, a taste of ash in his mouth. They turn. Their footfalls erase hope. The air sighs, colder.
Enzo broods: _Why does the church sharpen its knives here? Lust demons, tygarians…are we prey?
[Morning. A pitiful reprieve.]
Sunbeams slice terma's facade—a lie. In a soft bed, Yutsuki (18) arches like a bow, bandages tight, pain a landlord in his skull. He pries eyelids open.
"Where…am I?"Jyutu High. School of Soccerers," says Enzo, a bald relic whose wrinkles map a thousand sorrows. " it's a miracle you survived, you had a some strength in you. enzo said enlighten the you teen. Memories avalanche:
The gate.
The ropes.
Mitsuki's smile.
_Tap. Tap. Tap._ Scalding tears carve canyons in his cheeks. Fists knot, nails cutting crescents."They're…gone. My parents…Mitsuki…"
Enzo folds him into a sepulcher of cloth. The boy's frame racks, a vessel breaking:
"I'll burn him. I'll destroy him."
The old man holds tighter, as if he too could drown in that vow.