The walls were smeared with blood. The floors crowded with bodies. Hundreds of skinny, stretched corpses littered the halls. Not a single breathing body was left.
Outside, there was no difference. Only more carcasses littered the grass fields.
Naren lay with his hands pressed hard over his ears, teeth clenched, blood running from his lips where he'd bitten through. He had no idea how he got out. He just dozed off in the cafe, now he was here. Hearing all these screams.
"SHUT UP! SHUT UP!"
Footsteps. He looked up. Half-expecting the worst, half-hoping it was Maren. Instead, the figure of a young woman landed in the moonlight, walking towards Naren.
"Alice! Please make it stop! Please!"
She didn't slow down. She didn't even acknowledge him, instead the glint of a metal object raised high in the sky.
SHING.
The blade cut clean into the floor. Naren was gone.
A small bottle rolled to a stop by a little boy's foot several meters away.
"Neat trick. Why didn't you use it in the water...Too nervous...Or maybe you couldn't find an adequate reflection?"
"How do you know about my reflections?"
She walked toward him. He stepped back.
"You're cursed, Naren."
He didn't answer. She came right up to his face, looking directly into his golden eyes.
"Your sister. She's alive."
Naren sat down hard on the ground. Completely caught off guard by the sudden revelation.
"She cursed you, didn't she? A curse of forgottence — attracting nothing but calamities. Something that should be wiped out."
"What are you talking about. How do you remember — how do you know she's—"
The axe came down again. Naren was too out of it to even think of using whatever magic he did before. All he had time to do was shut his eyes tight.
However, instead of the sharp sting of cold metal, he felt a blunt force hit him in the ribs, pushing him back.
"What happened to our deal?"
A tall lanky man with a cigarette dangling from his mouth held a deep scowl on his face.
"I never agreed to spare the boy, did I?"
Maren looked at the spot where Naren had been standing. Then at Alice. His expression was genuinely confused.
"What boy?"
Naren's face went pale.
Alice smiled. Slow and crooked.
"What a curse she cast."
Lunging at Maren, she cut a through his flesh like butter, slipping right across his abdomen. His top half sliding right through.
However, instead of falling to the ground, it reconnected through it's fibers, pulling it back onto itself.
When she looked up, Maren's limbs had begun to stretch — fingers extending, face pulling tight against the skull, blood weeping from his eyes, his nose, his ears, his mouth as his skin constricted around him.
She clicked her tongue.
"A regeneration fable."
"Why's there another kid alive. I thought I only told you to spare one."
Maren who's very presence now reeked of rot lunged at Alice, his long nails narrowly missing her as she stepped back, an arc of metal slinging down at the same time cleaning dismembering that very arm.
But just like before, the very fibers of his ghastly skin stretched grabbing onto the arm right before it could fall to the ground.
"Who...is...boy?"
Alice clicked her tongue, a scowl on her face as she mumbled some curse under her breath. Raising her free hand, she flicked her finger. Maren began to float, before the axe spoke.
"No. You've been relying on your fable too much."
Grumbling she dropped her hand and assumed a defensive pose, Maren landing softly on the ground as well.
Once again, he lunged at Alice, going for her neck. This time she didn't dodge. Instead, she grabbed his hands, the nails prickling her neck.
Pivoting over her leg, she drove her elbow in the creature's abdomen, it instantly burst into a cacophony of flesh and gore that no elbow should be cable of.
As the fibers grabbed onto the various pieces of flesh, Alice gripped her Axe, ready for another horizontal slash.
"What a nifty stress ball you'd make."
The clouds parted. Moonlight falling across the blade, letting it glisten lightly.
Naren stepped out of the reflection on the axe's surface. The sudden weight throwing Alice off balance. Within the moment, two fingers jammed right into Alice's eyes, causing her to drop the axe and scamper back.
"You little dumbass...Don't you see? It's already over."
She flicked one finger upward, Naren sent flying into the air, hurling several meters in one go. Then just as he defied gravity, he submitted himself to it once more, barreling down.
But right before he hit the ground, Maren snatched him, grabbing him by the leg, dangling above his mouth. Jaws stretched wide. Wider than it should, giving a glimpse of the empty void that was a Wendigo's stomach.
"Shoulda killed him when I had the chance...See! He forgot about you Naren!"
Maren stopped.
Something moved behind his eyes. He looked at the boy hanging from his fist — at the tears welling in the golden pupils staring back at him. Something about those golden eyes.
He let go.
"Wow."
The moon once again peered through the clouds. In the wide open field was a creature. Grotesque and stretched out. It had a stench of cold iron and rot. The creature's own hand was shoved right through its own chest—Maren had pierced his own heart.
Nothing about the thing was human. Nothing but its eyes.
"Naren."
The voice came out cracked.
"Who's name is that?"
The creature fell to the ground with a thud. Lifeless. Along with it, drops of rain started pouring from the sky. One by one, the drops got faster.
Naren got to his feet. Battered, bleeding, limping. He walked over to Alice and threw a punch. Slow. It barely landed.
"Bring him back."
Another one.
"Bring him back."
Tears were running down his face now, mixing with the rain.
"He's dead."
"Bring him back."
He threw another. She caught his fist this time and held it.
"He's already dead."
Naren looked up at her.
"He's the only one who remembered me."
His voice broke.
"It was the first time he said my name."
He swung with his other hand.
"I never got to respond to it."
The rain was loud enough now that the sound of him crying disappeared into it. Alice breathed in slowly. She took both his hands and held them.
"Naren."
He looked up, grasping for air.
"He's dead."
More grief flooded his face. He wailed, only for his voice to be drowned out by rain drops. Not even his voice could reach wherever Maren had gone.
He clenched his fist, tighter, blood trickling from his nails digging into his palm.
"Of the entire world, do you know how much humans have conquered?"
Alice looked at him with something genuine in her eyes. Wonder, almost.
"Thirty percent. The rest is hunting grounds for beasts. Places only a shaman could survive, those who've sold their souls to those very beasts...That's where your sister is."
His breathing slowly steadied. The tears came less fast.
"What...what?...How?...How the hell can I trust you!...She's gone! She left me and died!"
"Come on Naren. You believe that just as much as I do...After all the whole world knows she's alive."
His golden eyes glimmered, tears still flowing down.
"The world is after your sister Naren...Out to hunt Cinderella."
"Cin...der..."
His golden eyes waned, as his voice trailed off and so did his consciousness. Falling right into Alice's arms he was fast asleep.
The axe spoke first.
"You really gonna let him live."
"Why not? It'll be fun at least...I'm sure master would love it."
"..."
"Imagine the faces if he attends the Witch's Festival...Well he might just die before he even becomes a shaman."
"He's definitely going to die."
Becoming a shaman was something only one in a million could achieve. Even then, one in a hundred shaman scarcely live for five years. And then, only an impossible amount is ever capable of finding a being like Cinderella.
But Fairy Tales often romanticize the impossible.
————————————
FIVE YEARS LATER.
A crude raft made of old logs and vines that seemed like it belonged on a shallow pong was bobbing along an obsidian black ocean. On it, a boy of sixteen laid sprawled out. His curly red hair converging into black tips.
He wore clothes way to big for him, like they were made for a more lengthy older man, jeans and a plain white shirt. The only thing that fit him was a dull red scarf that he had pulled over his eyes.
A leather sack sat next to him brimming with fruits. One he was chewing on.
"Goth, I'll gib all theeth frooths..."
His raft began to shake with more vicious intent. In fact, the sea all around him acted like it had some place to be. Moving with such pressure and aggression that it was a miracle the raft hadn't been swallowed by now.
The shaking turned into spinning, as the sky began a blur. The sea draining into one central point. A giant whirlpool easily a kilometer long enveloped the obsidian skin of the ocean.
And right underneath, was a looming shadow, easily several kilometers large.
"juth pleath thabe me."