Ten years was all it took to turn Castle Oblivion into a grey, sickly skeleton. Ten years defeated it's legacy as a home and as Hell, and ten years had spread over the walls as rot, cracking the bones of the once proud King. Only the rats bit and clawed over the marble steps now, their mindlessness protecting them from the poison of forgetting that lingered still.
Rats, and a single Nobody.
It was cold in the grey marble cells of Oblivion. A rotting leather coat didn't provide warmth any more than the layers of dust that blanketed every floor, and it was rubbed through with use and disintegrating under the arms of the man that wore it. It cracked and flaked when he moved, crumbling into gritty black dirt as skeletal fingers flexed and a protruding spine bent double. The hood had been torn off years ago, boiled and chewed and finally eaten in a bout of desperate hunger-the pocket linings hadn't survived cooking. He regretted tearing them out once they were gone-it made scavaging harder, though now there wasn't enough to fit in one hand most days, of course, unless he got lucky and managed to catch a rat.
He sat in the corner of the topmost room of the ruined castle, twisted into a suffocated foetus, arms wrapped around his knees and hugging them to his chest. It was the end days: even without the loss of his memories he knew how long he'd been lost in this building, knew how little time he had left. It was a bitter irony that the same mechanism he'd relied on in the past was what would be the death of him now as he forgot how to get the Hell out, and forgot- on each and every floor- why he was moving at all, before he retreated back to his corner.
He'd forgotten too how to nourish himself: another cruel twist of fate when he alone was the only Organization member who might have been able to feed himself (gorge himself, if he dared fantasize) with his powers, but it was all he could do now to reach over and suck water from a crack in the wall. With the end coming, he took relief in knowing that he'd never have to eat another rat.
Marluxia had once been the Lord of the tomb he haunted, before his own arrogance had destroyed him like it so often does to villains in stories. And he was a villain of that there was no question: he'd taken children hostage, tried to destroy the Organization he'd been invited into, all for his own forgotten purposes, and he'd failed. He should have been dead long ago, but he supposed death wasn't enough of a punishment for the likes of him.
Soon he'd see if there was a Hell waiting for him once his breath ran out. Twenty minutes, maybe. It was hard to tell precisely: time seemed to forget here too, leaving Marluxia alone for ten long years after his was supposed to have run out.
He never doubted that Hell existed, a remnant of the time before he lost his heart: he'd been raised in the desert as the prodigy of religious extremists and God had been tattooed into him with whip and rod, engraved into his every thought and action. He knew that his body as it was now, while lacking a heart, still had a soul: the reports from their organization's leader confirmed as much. Would God hold him accountable for his actions without a moral compass to guide him?
Once, long ago, he'd lived only to please his God. A child of the troubled desert believed in God because only God could offer hope when the earth exploded around him. You hoped you weren't about to meet Him when death rained down from the sky, and you thanked Him when he spared your life. When He decided to raze your home to the ground, you just hoped you wouldn't be salting the earth with your blood. The closer to the ground you were, the safer. The further from Heaven, the better.
Unfortunately that was not a lesson that Marluxia had learned growing up. He had been a gifted child and too spoiled to hide it in an arid wasteland greenery where was practically myth, an imported miracle tinned and soggy with salt and oil, seasoned with the slightly bitter tang of aluminium that would be salvaged for pennies by the beggars and children worth less than the garbage they collected. Not so for the child with green thumbs, who could grow rice in centuries-dry sand. At the foot of dangerous hills he bought the wrath of God down on him by playing Cain and daring to grow food that had no business thriving in a desert.
Retribution rained down without mercy. God demanded a blood sacrifice and the mountains had provided it in a hail of bullets and fire that tore apart the frail bodies of mothers trying to save their babies. All men fell in the onslaught, all but the wild-haired boy who hid inside his green haven. He screamed in fear as he was dragged out by his hair and screamed in agony as he was hauled through blood-soaked sand, dead hands reaching out through the raging dirt to scrape at his legs, kicked aside by the uncaring militia that forced their trophy into the mountains of Hell.
Marluxia shifted slightly, flakes of rotten leather sprinkling the filthy marble floor. His chest was tight, the fluid in his lungs rattling like dice in a cup as he fought for breath he didn't deserve. The memories of his past were flooding into him now like a river bursting it's dam, bombarding him with a new kind of agony that made his head spin and the hollow behind his ribs feel heavy and full. He didn't want them. He didn't want to die in so much pain, with phantoms of fear plucking at him with ghostly fingers. 'Marluxia' hadn't even been his name then, they weren't his memories anymore. The accursed castle was dying with him and it's death gurgle was this release of ghosts from it's grip.
The hunted boy's name was Alrumia. "God's Radiant Light" it meant, a well-intentioned rape of Latin and Greek to those who cared, though they were few and far between.
No one spoke to Alrumia once he was buried in the mountain caves. He was dirty and impure, a heretic with a use and he would soon learn how a filthy tool was beaten clean. Locked behind cold bars in a black room, he cried until he had no tears left and his head screamed in pain for him to stop. Tears didn't help. No one consoled him or offered him a single word: he was invisible and powerless, a parasite in the bowels of Hell. No food came and for three days he sat in crushing silence, sipping slowly at the lone cup of water provided and collecting his piss in a leaking bucket, just in case he needed it, before tipping it out on the third night. No one was coming. He was going to die.
The realization was a relief and a comfort. Death was better than the overwhelming darkness of the pit where the tortured ghosts of his family lingered in the corners, waiting for Alrumia to forget them before snapping him out of his sleep to the sound of imagined gunfire. The last of his water was gone and the inky black supported no life: on the fifth day he lay down to surrender, longing to sink into the same earth he'd so often buried his hands in. His fingers fanned like roots over the cold, rough sand, willing it to welcome him home.
The thunderous clap of a food tray being shoved though a slot in the door was so loud it almost deafened him, forcing out a piteous cry of pain, his hands clapping over his ears in a prayer for mercy-the silence that followed was so thick Alrumia thought he might have lost his hearing completely. Not yet understanding what had caused the punishing crash he opened his mouth and gave a tiny croak, faint with relief that he could hear himself even though his voice was so broken from crying he had barely made a noise at all. His heart was in his throat and pounding viciously, adrenaline making him shake, senses on fire as he edged towards the door, feeling along the ground in hopes of a knife or a gun. Instead he found his worst nightmare: life extended.
A grown man wouldn't have been able to stop himself after five days without food. Alrumia was a boy of eight and had never known true hunger-he was powerless to resist with every part of his body screaming for sustenance head spinning giddily. With animal moans of ecstasy he stuffed food into his mouth hand over fist as though someone would take it off of him, all ability to think destroyed by the gift of stale flatbread and a cold, greasy stew. Nimble fingers and efficient tongue scraped the bowl to pristine cleanliness, not a crumb or drip wasted, and only when his stomach ached with excess did he slump back and burst into fresh tears. The escape death had promised him was as false as his resolve.