It was darkness that he suddenly saw.

But did that even make sense, he found himself suddenly thinking. If you had been previously been seeing nothing beforehand, wouldn't that mean that he would have been seeing darkness in the first place, instead of only just noticing it now?

Maybe he had just been paying little attention to his blackened vision. Or maybe he was now dead, his mind forcibly taken out of his living self and suddenly placed in the blackness of the afterlife. He didn't pay much attention to the various religions he had some knowledge on, but he was pretty sure none of them encompassed just empty darkness. Unless it was some kind of special hell inflicted on the worst of sinners; eternal darkness; a mind-twisting isolation perhaps?

No…it wasn't that. Couldn't be, since a void wouldn't be giving him the kind of sensation he was only just now beginning to fell, one of something pressing against his back. More accurately, however, it was him that pressing against something. But in a neutral way, not forcing his body against the flat surface, more like lying down against it. It felt smooth and slightly damp. It wasn't the only sensation either, as there seemed to be drips of liquid falling on his face.

If he only he could see where he was…

A swell of mirthless humour escaped his mouth as he realized his idiocy.

If only he could see indeed.

His eyes were closed. He had completely forgotten about the fact that a person had to make the conscious choice to open their eyes. Strange how he remembered other equally trivial stuff, such as kinds of touch, how many religions there were and the concept of stupidity.

Maybe I really do possess a short attention span he thought before opening his eyes, the simplicity and familiarity of the action completely contrasting his previous cluelessness.

What awaited him was a vision of the full moon, high in the night sky. Surrounding it was a ring made of partially shattered boards of wood, from which the drops of water were falling. He titled his head to see the boards of wood extended even further as part of a vast wooden floor. He himself was evidently on the underside of it.

"I wonder what made that hole?" He muttered curiously. He suddenly became silent again as he realized he had just spoken out loud; he was surprised at how smooth, yet casual it sounded.

God, what was up with this mind if he didn't even remember what his own voice sounded like? Maybe the events, if any, that had led to him ending up in this hole could shed some light on his hit-and-miss memory recall.

He ran his vision ran across the rest of the area he was in; it appeared to be cave-like in nature, with the walls shining due to condensation on the stone surface. The entire reminded him of a bowl; no way out except for straight up.

Guess he couldn't stay on his back forever after all. He realized the possibility had been brewing away in the back of his mind, he just hadn't been focusing on it; sounded easy, but no-one could spend their lives on their backs forever.

Almost experimentally in nature, he drew his arms back to his sides so that he could push himself up into a sitting position. Shaggy black hair fell over his eyes as he sat up, and he blew it out of the way. Next, he drew his legs up so that his knees pressed against his chest, before leaning forward off his behind and onto his feet, extending his legs so that he was fully standing up.

Then he promptly stumbled forward at his new equilibrium.

"Whoa, okay!" he exclaimed, "Steady now, steady!"

As he stumbled forward, he placed his hand on the rock wall to steady himself. After closing his eyes and taking a breath, he felt his balance return.

"Okay," he muttered, looking back around, "now how do I…" he trailed off when he realized that his hand didn't feel as though it was pressed flat against the wall as it should have been. His head turned back to see a shocking sight; his fingers were embedded in the stone wall. He blinked in surprise before soundlessly drawing his arm back in surprise. To his ever increasing surprise, the holes his fingers had made, or at least should have, were missing.

He looked at his hand in surprise, and that was when his surprise reached its peak.

His fingers seemed too been shimmering. Almost ghost-like in manner, a thin layer of icy white mist hovering near his near-transparent fingers.

Oddly enough, he wasn't scared. Surprised, certainly, but not scared. As he turned his hand, he watched as it returned to normal. Well, as normal as a pale hand could be anyway. He then turned his attention back to the stone wall, before extending his hand once again to put it against the stone surface. Now he saw that this was the instance they became ghost-like, the tips of the fingers passing through the stone, but no further than that. His excitement growing, he did the same with the other hand, only this time a little higher on the surface.

Then, with a little inhale, he reached up further with the first-placed hand, phased it back into the wall, placed on foot against the wall, and then the other, so that he was effectively clinging to the surface with his hands. A grin spread across his face and he looked down to make sure he was actually lifting himself off the ground, realizing the tips of his feet were also phasing into the wall. With a growing sense of euphoria, he continued to climb upwards with his phasing limbs. It all felt so natural to him, the process of climbing upwards, so he was almost saddened when he reached the top.

Gripping one of the broken planks of wood, he pulled himself out of the hole. Standing up, he looked around and found himself to be in some sort of study, and a ruined one at that; the desk was shoved into one corner and papers, some torn, where scattered all over the room. Several plaques hung haphazardly on the scarred walls; that was, if they weren't lying on the floor. He walked over to one of them and picked it up, turning it over in his hands so that he could read the raised letters;

Certificate of Profession, Doctor Victor Craft

His eyes then fell to a cracked, framed picture on the ground, and this took his attention much more completely; it was of a man, a woman, and two young girls all standing together. The eldest looking girl had the man's hand on her shoulders and the youngest one, holding what appeared to be a raggedy rabbit doll, held the hand of the woman. They both had chestnut brown hair and soft round faces, likely inherited from the woman who was most likely their mother, especially since they didn't look a thing like the father; his hair was dark and his face, whilst handsome, was only so in a harsh, angular way.

There was also the fact that whilst the woman and two girls had genuine smiles on their faces, the man's didn't seem real; only forced as part of a façade.

"…"

A gunshot suddenly rang out, followed by a cry, causing him to tear his eyes off the photo in the direction of the gunshot, which had come from behind the closed door. Placing the plaque on the desk, he walked around the hole and towards the door, opening it a tiny amount.

What awaited him was large hall, filled with upturned tables and corpses, some fresh and still bleeding out, some lying in dried pools of blood.

One of the still bleeding corpses had a couple of uniformed, helmeted, gun-toting figures standing over it. To him, they looked like soldiers.

"You idiot, you were meant to shoot him out in the courtyard before he opened the doors to this room!"

"I just thought it would have made more sense to do it in here, so that the sound of the gunshot didn't scare off any other of the arriving servants."

The first soldier to have talked pursed his lips, before shrugging.

"Well, good point."

"Also," the second soldier let out a small smirk, which was visible due to his helmet uniquely lacking a mouth guard, "it'd be easier to do it in here so we wouldn't have to go through the trouble of dragging their body inside."

The first soldier sniggered.

"Yeah, that's another good point."

"C'mon," motioned the third soldier to the door, who had allowed himself a similar laugh, "We'd better get back outside to wait for the rest of the servants. But in case another one of them is able to get too far away before someone can't pull the trigger in time, one of us should stay here."

"I'll do it." Said the first soldier, so the other two nodded in thanks and moved towards the double doors of the hall.

All whilst he watched from behind the door, his fingers gripping the wood. This time, there was no ghostly aura from them; deep grooves were left in the door with his fingers alone.

There was some sort of deep rage towards these uniformed men, one he quite couldn't place. What he could place was what that deep rage wanted to make him do.

He wanted to kill these men. And he would start with this one. How, he didn't know, until he saw the sword hanging off his waist. A surprise attack was the way to go here; take his sword and kill him with it, and then he'd go deal with the other two, his mind racing through the best courses of action to take.

Making sure the solitary soldier wasn't going to turn around after observing his casual body language, he moved quietly from behind the door and across the floor, blatantly ignoring the puddles of blood he was treading in. Soon, he was just a short bound away from the soldier, who still hadn't turned around. A smile, excited at the prospect of taking the life of the soldier, found its way onto his face as he took another step forward.

Creak

The sound erupted into the hall as his foot came down onto a single creaking floor board and the soldier whipped around, his eyes widening at the solitary figure who had snuck up on him. The soldier began to bring his gun around, but in an instinctive action that took even him by surprise his aggressor lunged forward and swatted his gun out of the soldier's hand with shocking strength before making a grab for the sword. The soldier recovered fast, however, and grabbed the attacker by the collar of whatever kind of shirt he was wearing, spun him around and slammed him into a still standing table. The attacker attempted to recover, but the soldier gave him barely any room to, punching him in the chest and knocking the wind out his lunges.

With growing confidence that his military training was overwhelming the attacker, the soldier went for another punch, and was rewarded with shock when his assaulter brought his arm up and caught the punch with his forearm. Before the soldier could react, the attacker's other hand shot out and struck him in the face.

Not only did this send the man flying backwards, but for the briefest of moments, when the fist connected with his skull it had glowed the familiar ghostly white as it had done when the attacker had awakened in the hole.

The moment it did, a surge of knowledge flooded through the attacker's mind and a gasp came out of his mouth as he put a hand to his forehead, pushing off the table he had been slammed into to stand back up.

"Ah…FUCK!" screamed the soldier as he writhed on the ground, clutching his nose as a rapidly increasing flow of blood came from it. He glared up at his attacker with anger in his eyes, "You old piece of shit, you have any idea who you're messing with? What I'm a part of?"

The attacker fixed him, suddenly, with an unblinking gaze and the soldier's mouth froze before he could continue ranting.

"Your name is Nennox and you're a member of the Imperial Army. You signed up 11 years ago and have been endlessly brown-nosing anyone you think could help you advance up the ranks. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't and sometimes you've pushed them so much they straight up demote you. You've made a sum total of 11 movements upwards and 12 down and you're hoping that by doing an outstanding job here, directing your fellow soldiers and taking the unsavoury responsibilities, all to paint the image of yourself as a hard-working fellow worthy of a higher pay check," he leaned down and stared closer at the stupefied soldier, "Is that who you are?"

"I…I…"

"I'll take your gobsmacked expression as a yes," the attacker said, his words forming far quickly and efficiently, as they had done at the earlier listing of Nennox's career aspirations. He crouched down in front of Nennox and extended his hand towards his face, his following sentence given as a whisper "So I'll see what else I can take."

BANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANG

One stream of bullets tore into his outstretched hand, before another into his side. He was sent flying backwards to smash onto the ground, his body unnaturally twisted and the last thing he saw were the other two soldiers running over towards him before his eyes closed and he was swept into darkness.

Until his eyes shot back open and he sat up, fast as a bolt, a wave of nausea sweeping over him. He clamped a hand over his mouth, but thankfully found that no vomit was coming up. He then ran the same hand over his other hand, certain he had seen it get shredded by gunfire. It was now completely fine.

"What…?" he stopped his exclamation short, unable to escape the creeping feeling of déjà vu as he became aware of his surroundings. He twisted his head around to see that he was back in the same cavern he had first awoken in.

That…made sense.

He stopped moving.

How the hell did it make sense? He didn't know how he was one minute being killed and then somehow back in the same place he had first wakened.

But at the same time, it felt like he should now, and because of that his efficient state of mind returned, the one that had arisen when he was picking about that soldier's life.

The soldier.

He looked back up to see the familiar hole in the floor which he knew led to a study. Where they still there? Or was this some kind of time-loop, like the kind he had read about in his books on-

Hang on; he had books on the subject of time's physics.

One problem at a time, he thought. If those soldiers were still there, he had lost the element of surprise, and ghostly phasing hands and feet aside, he had no weapon to use.

Until his eye caught sight of something twinkling in the darkness, buried in the ground about an arm's reach away; something that led to a smile spreading over his face.

"Who the fuck is that?" shouted Nennox, as he kept the handkerchief pressed over his bleeding nose.

"Whoever he is, he did a real number on you," chuckled another of the soldiers, Maidez, earning him a glare from Nennox as their superior, Sgt Hammay, looked suspiciously at the face-down corpse.

"He's not dressed like the rest of the servants," he noted, before turning to Maidez, "Maidez, turn him over."

Maidez was about to complain to Hammay that he could simply do it, before remembering that he was a sergeant, and a soldier questioning a sergeant wasn't a wise choice. With the muzzle of his gun, Maidez flipped the corpse over onto its back, noting quietly how light it seemed.

All three men observed the corpse.

"Hey, he looks familiar," noted Maidez.

"Yeah," Nennox briefly forgot the pain in his nose and squinted, before shock fell over his face, "No way…he's dead…"

"Certainly looks it," stated Nennox.

"No, I mean he was dead before!"

"Before what?"

"Before…this!" Nennox gestured at his own broken nose, which then leaked a clump of bloodied phlegm. Hammay swallowed back a shudder of revolt.

"Well then, you going just sit there throwing a tantrum, who is he?"

Hammay's head suddenly snapped backwards and a spray of blood leaped into the air at the crack of a gunshot. Maidez and Nennox stared at where he had been standing only a second ago before they actually reacted, Maidez swinging his gun up to point it in the direction the gunshot only to meet a similar fate as his sergeant, this time twisting around as a bullet lodged itself in his left eye.

That left Nennox by himself to turn and see the man who he had claimed to have died and then seen die right before his eyes standing in the open door; he wore a long, black leather coat, held together over his chest with similar leather straps which hung down partially cover his grey trousers and nearly his simple leather shoes. His face was slender and pale, his hair coloured dark and cut short.

He held a gun in his hand, which was now pointed at the stunned Nennox, who believed he must be seeing a ghost.

"Who am I?"

Nennox decided to answer the formally asked question, to do one last thing before the end of his life came.

"You're Craft. Victor Craft."

"Do you know what's going on with me?"

"I don't."

He nodded, before pulling the hammer on his handgun back.

"One last thing; you just said I was 'killed' a while ago; who by and what for?"

Nennox numbly replied;

"The Empire's Strongest; General Esdeath. On suspicion of high treason."

Victor Craft smiled as new hate coursed through his veins.

"Thank you," the trigger was pulled and a third shot rang out.

A thousand miles away, General Esdeath, the Empire's Strongest, awoke. She stared at the roof of her four poster bed for a moment before breathing out slowly. The sleep paralysis leaving her body, Esdeath rose into a sitting position, supporting herself on her palms before she turned her head to look at the notebook resting on the drawer beside the bed. Inside of it were the rough illustrations of the one she loved and that made a smile form on her face. But it faded when she turned back to look in front of her and out the window.

Turning herself around so that her slender legs hung off the edge of the bed, Esdeath got to her feet and walked over to the window, the reflection showing her own face back at her. It was plastered with an expression that she didn't usually have; one of uncertainty.

It wasn't to say this seldom felt emotion scared her; quite the contrary, it silently thrilled her that something had given her this feeling. But at the same time she knew that it was something to be wary off; what was it that was coming, the thing that had made her feel so uneasy?

Still, she thought to herself, letting a second smile cross her face, this time one that was devoid of any kind of love for another living thin, if it came, it came. It would become just another thing for her, the strong, to crush beneath her heel.