This is a story based off the future and past of a character from an earlier story of mine, "Those Who Remain." If you don't like it, please tell me why. If you do, great! Enjoy!

The Soulless One

A Shattered Life

The wind sweeping through the grassy plain whistled softly. The tall grass just beginning at the tips to wilt swayed back and forth as if unsure whether or not to obey the dictates of the air that drove them forward. As if in answer a boot crushed the indecisive stalks flat to the ground. Shocked, they struggled to lift their heads back to their former glory, only to find themselves crushed to the ground over and over, a half-dozen black metal-studded boots crushing them into dirt again and again. The fractured moon shining high above offered no sympathy. It had seen these black hoods on the move before. It knew what their coming meant…

The leader held up his hand, an unmistakeable sign to the five figures following behind him. Quickly they formed up around him, staring almost greedily at their target several hundred yards before them.

From beneath his night-black hood the leader's lip curled into a slight grin. Most would have called it a snarl. It had been so many, many years since he had lived here. So much had changed since then, both within the city stretching out before them as well as within himself. The years seemed to melt away as he looked upon what remained of the City of Vale.

He had been awaiting this day for so long. He had imagined his return to the town of his birth every day since he had stumbled away that night. In his mind he had reconstructed every building, recalled every face, planned his every action. He had traced the steps he would take upon his arrival, the people he would visit, the old friends he would greet.

Then his plans had changed. No longer was he a lost son returning to an old home, but rather a soldier sneaking through the front line of the enemies. Yet still he had been eager to return to the city that had raised him after so many years away from civilization.

There was nothing left of the world he had once known. He should have suspected it. After all, he had been there at the beginning of the end. But even he had not suspected it to be this bad.

The most striking change in the last 10 or so years was the size of the city itself. It had once been a thriving metropolis, home of tens of thousands if not more. Culture and technology had thrived, supported by the blissful peace of the relative safety the walls of the city as well as Beacon Academy afforded.

Now at least a quarter of the city, mostly the residential area to the east, was in ruins, and was swarming with hordes of Grimm attracted by the taste of fear in the air. At some point new walls had been erected around the breach, sectioning it off from the rest of the city. But the thousands of people whose bleached bones hiding among the shattered timbers of their homes now grinned up at the sky cared little. Safety had come far too late for them.

The population had been cut at least in half, some dying, some missing, but most just fleeing to one of the Kingdoms that fared better. The man had heard these reports in dribs and drabs over the years. Now he saw the effects in person. Had he been that kind of person, he probably would have shuddered. As it was, he simply continued forward. He had a job to do.

All of these changes had occurred in what had felt like an instant. He had seen it happen. He had been there that night. He could still feel the pulsing ululation of the sirens encompassing his every molecule, shaking every stone, drowning out all else. There had been nothing left, nothing but those unceasing, droning, all-consuming sirens…

The boy ran through the dirty back streets, his breath coming in sharp gasps. Some internal primal instinct drove him forward, fear clouding his every thought, adrenaline coursing through his thin limbs, and his terror mounting with each passing second. From every side noises pounded against his head. He found himself continually jumping in focus from one to the next, which only served to amplify his already considerable distress.

Nothing made sense any more. His city, Vale, was supposed to be a safe haven, a place where life could continue despite the ferocity of those vicious Grimm whose only desire seemed to be the destruction of all sentient life on the planet. His life had always been one of peace, trusting in the legendary Huntsmen and Huntresses to protect the people if all else failed.

Where were they now?

That same thought kept repeating itself over and over in his mind. Where were the Guardians of Remnant now that the everyday people needed them?

Beacon was under attack. He had seen smoke rising from all around it, heard the roars of a thousand Grimm, and tasted the fear that permeated the air. Ships were flying all around, picking up students, civilians, and soldiers from the area. But the boy could not join them. Not yet.

Grimm were running rampant in the streets, and no amount of Atlas robots would be able to stem the rushing tide of the thousands of creatures pouring into the city every second. Maybe, just maybe the Huntsmen could do it, if they got everyone together and….

But he knew deep down no Huntsmen were coming. At least not to this part of town. Those who weren't running for their lives or boarding an airship would be defending what was left of Beacon or the city's center. Out here, in the less well-off neighborhoods which he called home?

They were alone.

The boy had only one objective: to make it back home and save his mother and younger brother. He had no weapons. He had no training. He didn't even have his Aura unlocked. That practice was reserved for those bound for Training Academies. But of course only those who could afford it were able to send their children to such academies. The rest of the world was stuck as normal human beings: weak, powerless, and easily broken.

It wasn't right. And it wasn't fair. Especially now, when there was no-one to defend those everyday people. But it was life. There was nothing you could do about it.

Whispering a heartfelt prayer to the powers that were, the boy rounded the corner and tore down the abandoned street. Despite the suffocating darkness the streetlights were unlit. Many of the shop windows were shattered, presumably by looters, and most of the doors were shut. No light of any sort shone from any of the windows, but the occasional whimper of a scared child or wail of a newborn baby betrayed the scores of civilians still hiding in their homes. 'More like trapped,' the boy thought to himself. He couldn't understand why no-one had come to evacuate them. As they were, the people were practically a buffet line for the ravenous Grimm. At least by running they forced the Grimm to chase after them.

The thought didn't help.

Mercifully, there were no Grimm in sight on the forlorn street. But only time would tell how long that would last.

Relief coursed through the boy's small frame. His family's somewhat rundown house still stood, a shaky wooden structure dwarfed by the giant brick apartment building beside it. The shadow of the larger building stretched over the house eerily in the unnatural darkness. A sense of foreboding enshrouded the entire scene.

"Mother!" the boy shouted, throwing open the door and rushing through the small house in an instant. "Derek! Where are you? We have to get out of here!"

A muffled thumping sound from the cellar slowly grew louder and louder. A small boy followed behind by his frantic-looking mother emerged from the basement door. Upon seeing the face of her missing son, the mother choked back a sob of relief.

"Ian!" she cried, throwing her arms around him and smothering him in a long-lasting hug. "I was so worried! I was just about to come looking for you, but I couldn't leave Derek alone and he…"

"Mom it's okay," the boy, Ian, responded, trying without success to sound more confident than he felt. "But we need to leave. The invasion is getting worse, and no-one is coming to save us. I know a way out of the city, but we have to get out before any of those things come."

The older woman was in no state to argue. Her inconsistent ramblings were the perfect indicator of the overwhelming panic that every moment was welling up within her. Nodding somewhat unconsciously she motioned for her elder son to lead the way.

Ian looked down at his younger brother and managed a weak smile. The gravity of the smaller boy's terror spilled forth from his eyes, wetting the neck of his shirt and burning the small cut on his face. An embarrassing stain of much larger proportions had already darkened the inside leg of his pants. If not put in check, his overpowering consternation would soon render him completely immobile and useless; fit only as a quick and easy appetizer for the approaching Grimm.

Ian knew this. He could always tell what his brother was feeling. It was what made them so inseparable. And he knew he had to stop it now before it got out of control.

"Hey Derek," he spoke encouragingly. "We're gonna make it through this, I promise. The Huntsmen will come for us. They're good enough to beat a million Grimm each. I was just down at the Training Academy today."

The younger boy's eyes lit up. Despite not having nearly enough money to attend, the boys had often been taken by their father to go watch the young students at work. Many had been the hour spent peering over the brick wall or peeking through the massive colored windows at the children their own age learning to use their weapons and their souls as extensions of themselves. And every day the boys had wished that they might join those students, and perhaps someday attend Beacon and become a noble Huntsman protecting the innocent and striking fear into the heart of any Grimm that they found. And their father would laugh, somewhat sad that he could not provide for the wishes of his family, and tell them that there were many other important jobs that had to be done for society to function properly.

That all was, of course, before their father's untimely death at the hands of the White Fang. It had turned out that their father had not been the man they'd thought him to be.

Ian saw the hope flash back into his brother's hazel eyes. His own smile widened.

"How about this," he continued. "I'll tell you all about it after we get somewhere safe."

The younger boy nodded frantically. He had not seen or heard anything of the Academy since their father's death. Ian ruffled Derek's hair affectionately.

"Let's go," he added, walking out of the front door.

The piercing pain of the memory through his mind brought his senses back to the present. His companions were still around him, moving alongside him slowly towards the foreboding silhouette of the tower of Beacon. Little but rubble surrounded the half-ruined tower, evidence of the depths of the people's despair after Vale had been breached. Sure, they had tried to retake the area from the Grimm, but every effort was met with failure. Eventually they had given up hope, sectioning that part of the city off from the rest. 'Besides,' they had reasoned. 'That's the poorer part of the city anyway. All the better if the Grimm have it. It was a detriment to society anyway.' Thus they had doomed the hundreds still hiding amid the abandoned houses to the certain but slow fate of being hunted down and eaten alive. No Huntsman had tried to save them. The risk was too great. But wasn't that the job description?

The partially-collapsed tower served as a constant reminder of the devastation the Grimm had caused. It loomed over the once-inhabited areas now swarming with Grimm of every sort. The people of Vale were no longer a proud, independent race. They were livestock, trapped within their own city and only able to escape by sea. The walls built to protect the breach were constantly under attack by hordes of the Grimm. But most of the people, whether through courage or stupidity, refused to abandon their city to the creatures, and their determination prevented their fear from attracting the largest of the Grimm.

To the Huntsmen's credit some of them had continued to use the Tower as a sort of training ground, despite having moved the Academy within the safety of the Divide. It was a sort of rite of passage for the last year students. Each team of four would travel to the tower by underground train, pick a floor, and try to survive the night. There was, of course, a professional Huntsman or Huntress always on duty, ready to step in if things got particularly worrisome. Those who made it through the night graduated. Those whose cautionary Huntsman intervened were made to wait a few more months of training. It was a dangerous tradition, one that had left more than one student in a bodybag, but it proved that the grit of the Huntsman Corps remained, even if their honor did not.

Honor. It was a word that struck a strange chord in the cloaked man's musings. Once he had seen the Huntsmen as the epitome of honor, of courage. Once they had been selfless, always willing to do anything to save a life, always putting others' needs first. He'd wanted more than anything to be one of them.

His wry grin widened. Now he was the exact opposite of that childish desire. Now he was what all Huntsmen and Huntresses would fear.

Honor. The idea refused to leave. Even as he and the others stealthily slipped closer to the shattered square which engulfed the base of the tower, he felt the question rise up within him, as it had done so many times before. 'Am I...honorable?'

He rolled the question over in his mind as if it were as sweet wine across his palette. Was what he did, honorable? Noble? Was it making the world better?

His conscience refused to provide an definite answer. It never did. Once again he was forced to fall back on the subjective logic that had for so many years prevented him from truly contemplating the depravity of his actions. It had always worked before. It would in all likelihood continue to do so.

To the first pair of questions he had no answer. To the last he was sure. Ever since the Fall of Beacon the Huntsmen had begun to seize more and more power from the kingdoms all across Remnant. Under the guise of 'safety' they had begun to clamp down on all peoples with an almost dictatorial rule. It had come in small doses over the past 10 years: convincing the governments to do away with this law or that, enforcing curfews to prevent people from being killed by the Grimm that hid in the shadows, making it extremely expensive and nigh impossible to travel between kingdoms, and so on. The head of the Huntsmen in each city had eventually become, in all practicality, the Monarch of that area of land, essentially doing with it as he or she pleased. Who could hope to stop them? All of Atlas' robotic forces had been decommissioned after the hack in Vale. The Huntsmen had become the only protection of the people, and were abusing that office.

That was why he needed to stop them. To bring freedom and safety back to the world.

He nearly laughed aloud at that thought, as would have any of his other teammates. All of the 'freedom-fighter' propaganda was pure crap. He knew why he and his fellows had been assigned to this mission. They would have done it anyway, so the White Fang had decided to at least pretend it was a legit mission.

He wanted to brutally murder every last Huntsman and Huntress in Remnant.