Kazuma Sato coughed up the blood that had collected in the back of his throat. It appeared he had been lucky, the sudden sensation had activated his gag reflex. The vision faded from his eyes, leaving him lost for a moment. Then reality came flooding back to him.
He was steadily losing blood from the cavern he had once called his upper body.
Megumin.
Megumin.
Megumin...
Megumin!
What a messed up place we live in.
Flashback to memories a million miles away. Viewed from the outside. He can't seem to get her face out of his head. But it twists. Turns. Rips itself into pieces and contours into something unrecognizable.
Fast forward to another scene.
Someone chained up the doors.
They boarded up the windows.
Set fire to the floor.
Hack away to a crack in the wall.
And there's Megumin. Alone. Crying. Tied to a chair.
She's calling. Calling his name.
As if realizing his existence, her head turns to him. Blackened. Ruined. A grotesque thing from a nightmare. She opens her mouth again. A gaping hole.
Blaming him.
————————————
Kazuma awoke with a start, breathing heavily.
Feeling somewhat distressed, he took in the familiar sight of the small bedroom. The little part of his life that could truly be called his own. Nothing was disturbed. The pale walls a silent audience to his irregular breathing. And slow trip below the surface into insanity.
Kazuma sighed and closed his eyes.
It's just a dream.
It's just a dream.
It's just a dream.
Please...be just a dream.
And then he opened his eyes again.
Darkness.
It was dark. Well, of course it was dark. It was damned o'clock. The sun wouldn't rise for hours.
But there was something else.
The absence of light wasn't the only thing that he noticed upon opening his eyes. It was like the darkness that was around him...it was trying to move closer. Envelope his very being.
What he suddenly felt now was absolute, heavy, deeply unsettling, and invading everything from seemingly no source that one could easily pinpoint. It was like the darkness itself was now his enemy. That it had decided to carry out the deed of determining whether he lived or not.
And it was leaning heavily towards swinging the rusty knife.
This darkness was new to him. It was unlike anything he had ever perceived before. And he had perceived many a things.
With a shiver, he sat up in his bed and ran a bare hand through his hair. This was bad. The more alert he became, the more strongly he began to feel whatever was in the room with him.
And it wasn't Aqua this time.
Kazuma considered the wisdom of lying back down and sleeping till the sun arose. By that time he might get a better handle on himself, and find there was nothing to be afraid of.
Seriously, it was just the shadows. Nothing worth his time.
However the longer he tried to convince himself, the further his mind fell into the sea of horror. The knot of dread in his stomach, growing into a sinkhole that swallowed any sort of rational thought.
Fear. Yeah, that ship had definitely come in and spread its plague.
As Kazuma struggled to contain the rising surge of negative emotions, the darkness around him shifted, like a cloud of poisonous ink in water. For all its murky and unclear nature, it was finally forming into a single, simple word in my mind. He finally had a name for what he was perceiving, and it made the hairs on the back of his neck rise.
Evil. Pure evil.
Kazuma stood up and wandered down the quiet hallway to the bathroom, looking to splash some water on his face to try and wake up. Vague memories of the dream - no, of the nightmare - buzzed about in his mind.
Who was it this time? Darkness? Aqua? No. This time he couldn't remember. Well, more like he didn't know want to remember. And his mind wouldn't stop running away every time he tried to focus on the person. But as he stepped into the bathroom, the fog cleared.
Megumin.
Another nightmare about Megumin. This made an entire week of sleepless nights since that night. And it was becoming a never ending battle.
Splashing some cool water on his face, Kazuma finally managed to calm his nerves. Seeing his own face reflected in the mirror relaxed him. At least for a second. Then for a single, brief moment the droplets of water still clinging to my face turned a bright and deep red hue. Blood. And it wasn't coming from him.
Shift again.
Megumin.
Bloodied. Crying. And a...Around her neck-
Her blood trailed down her arms in rivers. Joining the streams that sprung from fingertips.
As his gaze stopped, her fingers twitched, raising to point at Kazuma.
"Why did you abandon me?"
Kazuma stumbled back into his room again, taking care to avoid more mirrors.
He quickly stuck his head under the covers, body going numb with a cold that had nothing to do with the room temperature.
There was evil in the room. It hung in the air, it crawled across the walls, it leached the oxygen from his very lungs as it gleefully raked its horrific claws across his mind.
Wham! With a startled gasp, Kazuma found himself on the floor. It felt like an icy dagger had been stabbed into his brain vault, letting in a mind-numbing panic that he barely managed to contain in time. Images, no more distinct than the room around him, began swimming before his eyes. Each familiar, but not staying long enough to be thought over or recognized.
Another icy stab in the brain made him wince. Both hands were numb now, despite it being summer.
As Kazuma struggled back to his feet, there came a mental lash that was closer to a physical shove. His brain started blaring alarms as his body was launched across the room.
Danger.
Danger.
DANGER!
That was the solitary word in his mind. And it told him that he had to get out of there. The darkness seemed intangible, but that didn't necessarily make it harmless.
Hurriedly, Kazuma stumbled for the door, the lack of light in the room compromising his mad dash. The few steps it took to get to the door seemed to waste such precious time.
"Kazuma? Where are you going?"
He never heard anyone move, not a single rustle or footstep. In fact, no one did move, he was sure of that. Because, he was the only one in this room.
But, there was someone by the door, leaning casually against the wall.
Kazuma's mind froze.
The panic began to rise again.
The body shifted—not moved; it did not so much as move even the smallest of physical space. One second, mystery person. The next, nothing.
And then Kazuma started to scream.
He was enveloped in the darkness. It was wrapping around his body and smothering him, crawling thick and icy through his veins. And then Kazuma realized it wasn't evil darkness creating that cold sensation. It was his own hands, slowly wrapping tighter around his neck.
And he was suffocating.
"Don't worry. Don't be scared. I'm here for you my love."