The room was devoid of any color ... except black!
Even the rays of the evening sun were transformed into a deathly gray.
Before the evening sun had started to set, she was already kneeling down in front of the black shrine.
Black curtains were hung throughout. No one could see who or what was being worshipped and no one could see what her face was like.
She wore a black veil over her face. The ends of her long black robe were scattered in disarray over the floor. The only thing that leaked out were a pair of old, shriveled claw-like hands.
Her hands were held together as she quietly recited a chant. But she was not praying for luck or good fortune. Rather, she was invoking a curse.
She cursed the gods, cursed the world, and cursed every single thing between the heavens and earth.
A young man clothed in black knelt motionlessly behind her. It seemed as if he had been by her side since ancient times. In fact, he appeared very much ready to kneel beside her until the end of the world.
The evening sun shined down onto his face. His facial features were handsome and prominent, but they appeared to be made of ice from the tops of a faraway mountain.
The setting sun quickly grew weak and insipid. The howling winds cried out as it blew clouds of desert sand across the sky.
Suddenly, she stood up and tore apart the black curtains in front of the shrine. She took into her hands a small ebony black box.
Could it be that this was what she had been worshipping? She grasped on to the black box with all her might, muscles and tendons bulged out of her hands as she shook uncontrollably.
A sabre rested on the altar. Its scabbard was ebony black. Its hilt was wrapped in a tattered black cloth.
She suddenly took the sabre and cut the black box in half.
There was nothing inside except for a heap of powdery red dust.
She took a handful into her hand and said, "Do you know what this is?"
Nobody would know - except for her, nobody could possibly know!
"It is ... it is sand!"
Her voice was sharp and bitter, like the cry of a lost soul in the stormy night.
"When you were born, the sand was red ... stained crimson with blood!"
The young man in black lowered his head.
She walked up to him and sprinkled the crimson sand over his head.
"You must remember that from this day forth you are a god ... the God of Vengeance! No matter what you choose to do, do with no regrets. No matter how you decide to punish them, it will be deserved." A mysterious confidence surged through her voice, as if all the demons and spirits between the heavens and earth had been summoned into the specks of red dust in her hands that were being applied to the young man in black. Then she lifted both her palms into the air and loudly proclaimed, "For this one moment, I've spent twenty years raising you! And now that everything has been completely prepared, why haven't you left yet?"
The young man in black lowered his head and replied, "I ..."
She took the sabre and stabbed it down into the ground in front of him.
"Hurry up and go! Use this sabre to sever every single one of their heads! Don't return unless you've succeeded, or else the heavens will curse you, and I will curse you as well!"
The winds were howling.
She watched as he slowly mounted his horse, pulled a black hood over his head, and ventured out into the black night. His figure slowly melded into the swirling clouds of sand.
The sabre in his hand also melded into the black night.
The entire world was blanketed by sand, blown viciously by the wind.
"Kill them all, my son"