Darkness, the absolute darkness, the blackest void you could ever imagined wouldn't come even a bit close to the terrifying thing that was surrounding me from everywhere my eyes could see. But, it was another aspect of this black emptiness that I feared much more that it's absence of the world around me. It was void's utter bone-crushing silence… And the feeling of being watched by thousands of soulless eyes, staring deep into your soul searching for something, lurking in the deepest corners of your crumbling mind, that was pressured by silent judgement of nobody, in nowhere, for hours, days or was that weeks already?

I don't know… So I did the only thing I could afford to do in this wretched black void that I could call my new existence. Sort through the memories of past. The memories of life were the only thing that was not teared away from me by the forces of destiny…

I was killed on the Thursday afternoon by a chain of coincidences I would've thought of as funny, if they were not real that is.

I was running late to work, because my phone's charger has finally been broken by an merciless entity called time, and cheap manufacturing, right in the middle of the night, and, conveniently, wasted away the charge of my old smart-phone, which effectively disabled my alarm clock, followed up by a missed buss.

At the moment I thought that the day couldn't get any worse, but oh how I was mistaken.

The uncontrollable car smashed into the buss-stop taking my live and lives of other people.

To think, that I could have lived if not for the blasted piece of cheap wire…

But, the disgusting part came next… I felt the pain of my skin tearing, my bones cracking, and my skull caving in on the brain… It hurt so much, but I couldn't scream. I couldn't even think… The phantom pain of a lost body was destroying the only thing that was left of me… My mind. But as soon as it reached its peak, pain slowly lessened its tole on the ruins of my sanity. And soon, the phantom pain from my final moments of being alive subsided to a faint sensation of numbness.

But suddenly, I heard a sound that thrown me out of the pained thoughts,

It sounded like a deep voice chanting something, only partially resembling a normal speech.

It got louder, and louder.

And then other voices joined the chant. It grew in loudness to the point of slightly hurting, while individual voices mixed between themselves into the cacophony of sounds and noises, that slowly brought bright explosions of light that added to the chaos the void become.

And then sounds become screams, and noises become gunshots.

In the blink of an eye the black void exploded into blinding white.

And then all voices were silenced.

I felt the body again. Its heat, its beating heart, the clothes that it was wearing. I felt.

I took a sharp breath, instantly coughing out something... coppery...

My eyes opened, seeing a mess of colorful blurs that made my mind swirl with dizziness. But pretty soon they focused enough for me to understand, what I was seeing.

And the first thing I truly saw was a face of the Cape buffalo staring at with concern, his lips moving, as if he was saying something.

Then the hearing came to me, as if I suddenly emerged out of the deep water.

"-ou alright? Can you hear me?" his deep voice was gentle, but carried with it a part of fear, concern and worry.

I moved my head to the left, trying to understand my surroundings, only to my strangely, but understandably tired gaze fell onto the body of a sheep in the white robes with a bullet hole in… his..? head, with his front hooves still holding onto a shotgun.

My head was gently turned away from the body by the hooves of the bigger mammal, that, I only now noticed, was wearing a slightly bloody and dirty police uniform. Wait..

"No no no, don't look that way, look at me," I met his gaze, "Okay, are you alright?" he asked.

I opened my muzzle..? to speak, only to start coughing. Hard. I felt the coppery taste of blood on my tongue right after.

Buffaloes eyes widened. He picked me up, and this allowed me to see the blurry outlines of the room I woke up in.

It had purple lighting from strange handmade candles, slight smoke from which slowly poured onto the floor, covering it like a miniature fog, and, for the reasons unknown to me, smelled like lavender.

But these candles were not the only strange thing about the room...

Perfect white circles, carefully drawn to contain different and weird looking symbols, that bare a slight resemblance to Nordic runes, if they were mixed with Latin letters, were covering every centimeter of the walls, which were stained in blood.

Around the room were scattered bodies of different anthropomorphic animals, all wearing the same white robes as the ram... For the exception of one deer buck with half of his face blown off... He had black robe, decorated with purple highlights and silver ornaments, depicting something...

But the most frightening thing about this room was next to him.

The stone platform, with embedded in it bloodied dagger.

It gave off the sense of great unease, something about this particular piece of metal was awakening the deepest, indescribable terror within my very being.

I wanted to get away from it as fast as I could, but at the same time my eyes were glued to the markings and design of this wretched thing.

So engulfed I was with it, my mind could not even notice the change of the surrounding area. The imprint of the dagger clouded my thoughts while the nice buffalo carried me out of an closed apartment building. Where he and I where greeted by the sight of the five police cars, one ambulance and the rushing towards us officers with paramedics, with an imposing grizzly bear in a suit which supported a badge of the chief.

"Detective," he said coldly, but not without relief in his voice. "You were told not to enter the building and wait for backup."

"I did chief Roarsky, but then I heard them-" began the buffalo.

"Shut it Bogo, you will report to me after the paramedics look over your wounds and the rescued cub. Now go," he said glancing at me..?

"Yes chief Roarski," said detective B-

Wait.

Bogo… oh dear.

The talking walking animals, the dead cult, the dagger, 'cub'…

Did I..?

No... that just cannot be possible!

My body took the shocking revelation as a cue for it to shut down.

And when I was finally in the paws of paramedics, my mind finally slipped into oblivion, letting it to rest and come in terms with the scary truth, that I wished were just a dream.

AN: Aaaaand that's the end of a prologue! I hope you liked it. If you find any mistakes, do not hesitate to point them out! Basically, the idea for this story was floating in my head for almost six months, and finally I come around to write it. The only thing I ask of you, is not to hate me for any mistakes you'll find, English is not my first language and I'm still learning it.

So, thanks for reading my first story. And I hope you'll stick around to read it)

Next update in a week.

See you later!~