CLOUD CONTINENT
9TH CLOUD DOMAIN
EXECUTION SITE
"Move!" A cloud knight shoved the boy forward. The sixteen-year-old stumbled across the cloud floors, looking miserable and pale. Scrawny, hunched, and not particularly tall, he seemed even smaller with his shoulders curled inward. His black hair was shaggy and unkempt; his dark red eyes were drained of light — a plain, empty stare that signalled resignation to his fate, an acceptance to his despair. Mundai Etakso was his new name.
People had gathered in front of a battered black wooden torii that stubbornly refused to fall apart. Before it stood the twelve judges of the celestial court, wrapped in white royal robes and ornamented with golden charms that resembled the sun and its brilliance. Beside them stood a pristine white cloud horse, young and brimming with vitality — except its sky-blue eyes were dead, its breath faint. A golden engraving around its neck bore its name: "■■■■■".
The judges parted as Mundai approached the horse. Some watched him with indifference, some with contempt, some with confusion. He touched the saddle's worn leather and, in one smooth motion, mounted. Then something grotesque seemed to slither beneath the creature's skin. White fur sloughed away to reveal pale flesh; from that flesh, messy black hair sprouted quickly. The sky-blue eyes flared crimson. The golden engravings blazed crimson and the horse convulsed, its form twisting until it became a big, gaunt, black donkey — half its face a skull, its sockets rimmed with crimson flame for eyes. The saddle creaked beneath the motion. The name that now ran along its neck read: MIZUKASHI.
Gasps rose from the crowd. Mundai sat motionless in the worn saddle as his half-undead steed carried him nearer to the torii, stopping a few inches away. The twelve judges fell back. One of them — his face curled in distaste — unrolled the scroll of the fallen and spoke, his voice echoing:
"Mundai Etakso, unknown child forsaken by the sun, born of chaos and darkness, you are hereby exiled to the world below, to wander as one of the condemned until your flesh rots."
A judge stepped forward, solder in hand, and pressed a mark onto Mundai's back: the mark of the fallen. The other judge spoke on, his tone theatrical.
"Receiving the mark of the forsaken, you are tainted. You shall never bask in the great sun's radiant glory. And have therefore become..."
He paused; all the judges intoned in unison: "A FALLEN."
As Mizukashi carried Mundai across the torii, he could feel a profound emptiness spread inside him as well as the feeling of something important being taken away from him. He could not name it at the moment, so he concluded it was the great sun's blessing leaving him. He looked down at the clouds beneath his steed. As he sighed — wistful and tired — the clouds beneath them began to rumble and darken, turning into deep shadows. Black streaks of lightning laced through the cloud and thunder rolled like a beast's roar, sending a chill across the execution site.
Mundai, expressionless, thought of his stolen life — of being "the one chosen by the great sun, the bearer of divine flame." He remembered Enryu, the troublesome, arrogant boy he once was, and how that life had been taken by a necromancer, by an ill-fated expedition, by the nine elders — or at least that was what he believed. He suspected the celestial court had supported their scheme to get rid of the Cloud 9 squad. Why? None may know but why they did it no longer mattered; the others were dead. Only Mundai Etakso remained. In the wake of their deaths, a turbulence of darkness grew in his heart.
"Why me? This isn't fair.""Why? Why did they do this?""Where did I go wrong? What did I do to deserve this?"
Then a voice answered — his voice.
"I didn't deserve any of this.""It's their fault.""Vengeance. Vengeance. I want them to pay for condemning me, for the sunlight abandoning me."
The voice grew audible, quiet but sinister, threaded with rage and hatred, and oddly audible to those around him.
"Pay. They all must pay. I will have my vengeance."
His bloodlust was palpable, sucking the air from some lungs in the crowd. He let out a shout, breaking into a roar.
"I'LL KI—"
He vanished in a bolt of black lightning, falling into the world below.
—
As he fell through the clouds, the world snapped into monochrome for a breath: a faint, distant crimson glow flashed and was gone. Before Mundai opened up an unprecedented sight — a realm not meant for mortals but for celestials.
Above, clouds were white as snow; below, they were black as charcoal. The sky bisected diagonally: one half crimson, the other a starry night. At the border where the two skies met hung a spherical celestial body — half a black sun in the crimson sky, the other half a crimson moon in the starry night.
At the centre of this vast, near-empty realm stood a towering obsidian throne. Its presence threatened to drown everything in chaos. Seated upon it was a being whose existence alone hinted at annihilation and a dark chaos, yet for a strange instant Mundai felt a subtle connection and glimpsed its appearance: it seemed like a small human child of maybe ten, draped in a cloak woven from true darkness.
Around the throne, four mounted knights stood.
The white knight on a white horse exuded elegant domination — a presence that forced all things to pledge their souls. He embodied conquest.
The black knight astride a black horse radiated raw violence, an uncanny wisdom for battle and bloodshed — the embodiment of war.
A blood-red knight on a red horse carried an endless, ravenous hunger — the embodiment of the eternal famine.
The last wore silver armour pitted with rust and on the edge of collapse, yet its stance held pride. The pale horse it rode brimmed with vitality whilst looking weak and frail; this pair's combined aura was both intensely powerful and terrifying, in a league of its own above the others. They embodied death.
The child on the throne shivered and collapsed back, almost imperceptibly. Mundai felt an excruciating pain spread from his left eye through his whole body. The four horsemen turned their heads toward him, but he was already gone.
—
EARTH REALM
A RANDOM FOREST
On a stormy night, a black bolt of lightning struck the ground, leaving scorched trees and a small crater. In that crater lay Mundai Etakso. In his shadow, two crimson eyes glowed ominously.
END