| Chapter 01: My Name, Your Name |

What happened? This smell…it's so thick, thick with…

The young man opened his eyes slowly; he had been laying face first into the dirt covered ground. His hands clenched into the ground deeply, grasping handfuls of black dirt in his hands as he began to push himself up onto his knees. He let out a couple of deep pants, his medium length black hair in his eyes to mask his vision. As he struggled to stand onto his own feet he managed to regain vision as the scene before him was completely horrific.

The land around him was torn apart and covered by destruction. The ground was filthy with blackened dirt, debris from buildings around the man, and…corpses. The man's eyes widened, his breathing coming to a still as innocent men and women laid littered around him, covered in each other's blood and the black dirt.

So much, there's just so much…death..!

The man took a few steps back, that's when his heel came into contact with something and he fell onto his back, letting out a loud yell as he hit the ground. He panted out of fear as he stared upon the sky; it was darkened as no sunlight seemed to come through, completely hidden by black clouds.

The man looked at his hands; they had been stained with dried blood. He came to wonder what exactly had unfolded here, but suddenly the memories flooded back in, as if having been concealed by the trauma of an injury.

"I remember…" He muttered faintly as he got back onto his feet, he tried to calm his heartbeat as he dragged his worn boots along the ground. He stared at the carnage around him, smelling a mixture of horrible smells. Things like ash, burning flames, rotting corpses, and the like.

"I was here with my Company…We were here on a request to investigate a town for a fugitive of the Kingdom." He mumbled to himself, "As soon as we entered the town though, there was a bright light and…and…"

A loud screech suddenly echoed throughout the air. The man perked up as his eyes widened anew, the first thing that came to mind was the fact that someone could have actually survived this carnage aside from himself!

He began to run towards the source of the scream, at the scene where the scream had seemed to originate the man came across what he actually believed was to be a survivor of the carnage. She was a beautiful young woman who had long chocolate covered hair; she wore strange red clothing and looked to be around the age of maybe eighteen in terms of physical age. She seemed to whimper in fear, backing up from what the man quickly saw to be a small pack of wolf like creatures. What caught his attention further was that the girl in her arms seemed to be holding a book like object; its design seemed to be peculiar from what he could see from where he stood.

Finally realizing the situation, he shook himself free of observing the scene and reached to his side. He whistled loudly, it echoing across the air as he successfully caught the attention of the wolves. He counted three of them, growing serious as he grasped onto and unsheathed his weapon of choice which was a western long sword.

My body seems to be in fine enough shape to deal with a small group of beasts!

The man yelled as he ran forward. A wolf lunged at him, but he quickly dodged and swung his sword in hand, slicing deep into the beast's side as fresh blood was spilled onto the ground. He let out a smirk as the wolf howled and collapsed onto its side, dropping dead. The other two wolves were still around and in unison they howled and charged for the man, the girl's eyes widened as she witnessed this, she opened her mouth to yell out however before she could the man had already acted.

The girl stared with wide eyed amazement as the remaining two wolves were quickly cut down in two fluid motions from the man who came to be her savior. The man simply walked past the sliced apart beasts as he shook his blade once, cleaning the blood off it before it dried. He closed his eyes as he then sheathed his sword slowly and as it went in all the way he opened his eyes to look at the girl before him and he gave her a warm smile.

"…Are you okay?"

"…" The girl was silent. She simply stared at him, backing up with a step as she hugged the book in her arms tighter.

"..?" He noticed her do this and he looked at her, "Hey…I don't mean any harm, I'm just askin' if your alright. Are you a local here?"

The girl stared at him, and seeing he was no threat she simply shook her head "no". She then looked at the book in her arms and her eyes narrowed slowly, "…Are you…after the Takara Nikki? Or is it my life..?"

"The Takara Nikki? You mean that fancy book in your arms?" The man asked her. He eyed it strangely, the girl nodded in response.

The boy stared at the book for quite some time before he perked up. Realizing he hadn't even introduced himself to her, he perked up a bit, frowning at his act of poor mannerisms.

"H-hey I almost forgot to introduce myself, my name is Kyosha Nobegane. My Comrades call me Kyo though." He gave her a toothy smirk.

"…Alice…"

Kyo perked, looking at her strangely, "What was that?"

"…My name…My name is Alice…Alice Takara."

"It's nice to meet you. Alice." Kyo smiled at her big, she then stared at him and noticed the optimism he seemed to show. She couldn't help but smile faintly, this was a first for her, to meet someone who hadn't wanted to kill her, whether it was just to remove here existence or take the book from her.

"It's nice to meet you too, Kyo-kun." She smiled at him; letting out a faint giggle as she loosened her hug upon the book she called the, "Takara Nikki".