AN: This is the prologue to the story. This is my first story, so I apologize if it's not as good as some of the others you've read. I tried to make sure there where no mistakes, but I'm terrible at proofreading my own work. Please let me know if there's anything I can fix to make it better!
-Echo
Disclaimer: I don't own Hetalia.
For a moment, just a single, blissful moment, there was nothing…and he was sinking, without a single sound, nor even a coherent thought, this was the place where life met death, and falsity met truth, where the lines blurred together until it all became a single indistinguishable object, and it was wonderful. This place, where everything was slowly melting away, burning in the dying flames of all the things that he ever had, or ever would have been.
His eyes fluttered open, fully prepared to welcome the cold, but oh so peaceful clutches of death. Something was wrong, it had to have been, for what greeted him was not the quiet, lethargic hands of eternal rest, but a far more violent presence. Blood. It was everywhere. It stained his hands, his eyes, and even seeped into the very depths of his soul, but this couldn't possibly be right. This was not how it was supposed to end; this was nothing like the wonderful oblivion he had so eagerly embraced just moments before.
This place didn't simply blur the lines; it twisted them into horrible deranged beasts, turned bravery into cowardice, and sanity into madness. The crimson tendrils were cold, so unbearably cold it burned, and the icy flames were lapping at his skin, scorching and freezing everything they touched at the same time, but that wasn't the worst part, oh no, the worst part was the sound. Never before had he heard anything quite like this utterly suffocating silence, silence so loud it was as if someone was screaming in his ear, an unearthly wail that was bent and broken with an indescribable agony. There was something else too, a small voice echoing in the back of his mind, fiercely trying to remind him of something he must have forgotten.
His eyes fell shut in a desperate attempt to block it all out. He was shocked to find that it worked. The terrible screaming silence, the frigid flames, the consuming, bloody, crimson, they all faded away, and it almost seemed as if the beautiful tranquility had returned, for a moment at least.
Then he saw it, the poisonous strands of red slowly oozing into the receding bliss. Terror's harsh claw constricted around his chest. The last of that wondrous beauty was fleeing, and the whisper was growing louder, now struggling to overtake that wretched silence, but it still wasn't enough. The words were still too muddled, too soft, and his will was rapidly diminishing. He knew he wouldn't be able to hold on for much longer, clawing and tearing frantically at the horrid, scarlet venom, but through the haze a single thought began to form: how had it come to this? When he first started out he had been so sure of himself, so confident in his abilities as well as his cause, so where had he gone wrong?
