Chapter 1

~ Lost ~

For months, he had been stuck in a cave dripping with salt water, covered in barnacles and stinking strands of kelp. He was chained to the very back of the cave, where the water sloshed in from the nearby ocean and sprayed him without mercy.

It hadn't been that despairing and miserable the first few days. He struggled to get out, attempted summoning his Silver Shooters, and even returned his Freitunier into its Guardian Stone state so to hope in lessening the shackles around his feet. It was all to no avail, he thought on the fifth day, and that was when they came in.

He could never see them; they were always avoiding the dim light straying in from outside and always seemed to make sure he could never spot them. But he felt their magics, and shuddered everytime they came in contact both physically and mentally.

There was only two of them, but that was more than enough to break down the deadly assassin. The first time was just prodding his consciousness and coiling around the barrier over his mind. The second and third time, however, was ripping his mind apart.

They took all of his memories except the ones about that red-haired boy and everyone who came with him. He couldn't even remember their names now, but he recalled welcoming a black-haired girl to the group. She wielded a spear, and he knew, not remembered, that he had fought alongside her countless times.

The fifth time they came, he wasn't as shattered yet; he still struggled, even if it was futile. He still had the spirit to not scream, to not cry, to not whimper in fear. But that was when he didn't know what they brought in.

Fish.

He had been deeply confused when he saw the flopping shapes of dark green and sapphire in the pool of water that had gathered at his feet. Of course, he hadn't been fully awake and functioning at that time; the previous mental experiments performed upon him had left him extremely disoriented. He found out later, when they began to live.

Those two wretched beings dumped a pail of fresh seawater into the back of the cave. Everyday, the tide would bring in a little bit more of the ocean, giving the carnivorous fish even more space to move around in. He had been chained a little high up from the ground, but soon, that wouldn't matter.

The water had reached to his feet once, but only once. That one time had been enough for him to lose bits of flesh from his heel and his toes though, which would be irreplaceable. The salt stung his wounds, and, in time, they were infected.

Then they took his sight.

It was acid, pure acid from the depths of Hamel that they poured into his eyes. The agony wasn't bearable for him anymore, nor was this torture; he screamed and sobbed and went mad. It wasn't possible for a human to stay sane after two weeks, and the White Wolf of Hamel wasn't an exception.

His beautiful cerulean eyes were his only protection in this cave here, and had always been his first security wall. He would see things before anyone else would, and dispatch of them before they could deal any harm to his friends. He would shoot someone down faster than anyone else precisely because he was the swiftest to detect them. The gift of sight had always blessed him, always made sure he stayed alive. And he even realized it, and used it to his advantage. He had honed it almost to perfection, hence why he was also referred to as the Deadly Chaser.

Years of working alongside with his ability of vision was taken away in less than a minute.

It only took that for him to give up on the will to live. He began to reach for the predators stalking beneath him, wishing that they could bite him until he bled to blissful death. It was better dead than alive right now, he thought. And so he let himself be targeted at, something that he would have never done if he were the boy he used to be.

But the pain from the large bite taken out of his right foot was enough for him to fight back. It was an animalistic instinct to live that rose inside of him, and he felt his bitten foot connect with a slimy body. Snaps and wildly-thrown kicks were traded, until finally they were too exhausted to continue. There was a large splash and nothing more. The skirmish between predator and prey was over, and both were still alive.

The days inched slowly by.

He lay limply on the shackles now, letting the cold steel of the chains bite into his thin wrists. He was starved and shivering, even though his torturers made sure he ate enough to stay alive. Winter must have come; the air was frigid, numbing the pain all over his body. A silly part of him even hoped that it would get cold enough for the water to freeze over and get rid of those swimming monsters beneath him.

He heard them approach again and shrunk as small as he could while being chained. He almost shut his eyes to block out the sight when he remembered that he was blind and that it wouldn't make a difference otherwise. The darkness suffocated him from all sides, no matter where he turned. Even if he strained, would the light ever come any closer? Would he ever see again? It was a hopelessly small, miserable world that he had been stuck into. The twinkling star in the distance was always too far for his arms to reach, no matter how hard he stretched.

But he felt it. Was that heat? It radiated from the footsteps that were coming towards him, and if he were still the Chung from before, he would have rejoiced and called out. But he wasn't. He trembled uncontrollably in terror; his voice had left him long ago. The only sound was the ripples that the fish left behind with their fins.

"Chung?" It was his name. His name. The name that he hadn't heard in forever, the one that he had almost forgotten about. To him, right now, he was a nameless, dying soul. "Chung? Are you fine?"

He could barely discern the gender from the voice, because he wasn't as sharp anymore. But his hearing had grown better after the days of blindness, and he knew it was a girl that was speaking.

His state of mind had been shrunken down to the thinking processes of prey. There was a predator coming towards him, and he wouldn't be able to do anything because he was bound to a wall. That was the way of the world, and that had always been. He was just too foolish back then to accept it. But now, he personally saw it, felt it. The pain in his feet and eyes and mind itself was altogether too lurid for him to ever forget. "Chung Seiker!"

It suddenly hit him. The memory of who had that voice returned to him in a flash.

He still denied the existence of another being in here, safe, though. It had to be one of them, mimicking her voice. There was no way, that after all this time, she would come and find him. Even the redheaded boy would have already deduced that he was dead.

And so, he kept quiet. He would accept his next punishment and wait for himself to erode away and die.

"You pathetic excuse of a guardian! Come out here at once, you shriveling piece of barnacle!"

Against his instincts, he croaked, "Eve...?"

"Seiker!"