Ash fell from the darkest sky. It caked into the tears staining his cheeks, but he could only stare straight ahead, could only look on the deep color of the sky. No moon, no stars.
It couldn't be the sky. The darkest, blackest night had never cloaked the world in this much crushing darkness.
What he could see was a deep orange glow. The barest light of a fire, of a destructive force beyond the black. It offered no hope and no path, no true light, but a simple coherency. A coherency to know just how screwed he was. Just how hopeless the situation was.
His muscles strained. Ached. Burned in thousands of painful bruises, scrapes, and scars.
He couldn't see what he was fighting, couldn't tell what force had beaten and cut and crushed him into the ground. Whatever it was had seemed to obliterate the light, had trapped him in the swirling force of uncertainty.
No defense was good enough, the power was nothing like he had ever seen. And he had never been more scared.
There was no warning. No idea of intent. No visual on the enemy, no idea if a weakness existed.
All he could do after fending it off for so long was to collapse, to fall back on the ground as his muscles turned to lead, as frustrated, pained, frightened tears cut through the dirt dusting his cheeks. His fingers dug into the earth as he choked on the air that felt stuffy and thick around him, shaking as for the first time he heard footsteps shuffling along the ground, leather soles on concrete and then grass.
He needed to run, he had to get away, but every ligament was strained to the point of snapping, every cell burned of its last degree of energy. He turned his eyes to try and see through the unbelievable darkness, to know what horror approached and he saw a figure illuminated in the fire. It was not so terribly large, but the figure lacked nothing in intimidation, it was a walking shadow which made its size suddenly so much larger as it blended into the cloak of its environment.
It billowed as it slowly walked, distorted by shadow and flame. And when it's face was given an instant of illumination he saw leather. Leather in the shape of a beak protruding from the hood.
A few more steps and a glint shone off of steel goggles.
He shook where he lay. The image was the look of a plague doctor, but in that moment the figure took the form of the reaper himself. Of death on approach.
"Please," he sobbed and struggled to scurry away, struggled to even move, "What do you want? Why are you attacking me? Who are you?"
The figure hung over him now, larger than life, darker than the pits of hell. A rattle coursed through its throat, deep, so very deep. Like his voice was a chasm. Inhuman. Perhaps made that way through distortion. Perhaps it wasn't human at all.
"You think I will believe you do not know us?"
He blinked soot from his eyes as a crack of light split the darkness. It continued to expand, the darkness showing itself for what it was. An entity. A creature all it's own. Something that had truly enveloped his surroundings and blocked out the moonshine and the glinting of the stars and the flicker of the streetlights.
He was still where he had been before, just outside of the city limits, just too far away to cry out for help. The night looked entirely the same. Save for the circle that was mulched by their fight and the dwindling flames still clinging to dim life.
The darkness, it's entity, pulled back to the figure, pulling into the man, if a man it truly was. It became one with its garb, swirled around him, cascaded over his hands like it was a pet to the still form of the leather beaked creature.
While it played over and around him, distorting him, the victim of the brutal attacks, pushed himself up as much as he could, coughed on the air, only now clearing, sobbed on the painful ache of his broken rib and wiped away the blood from his mouth as he tried to see through the flickering movement of the living darkness.
"What are-"
The figure stepped into him in a fluid movement, crouched to one knee, closing their distance and freezing its victim with fear. He could smell the leather, could hear the breath.
And suddenly, he could see him.
The darkness pulled away and the hood fell back. A black gloved hand rose to its face and peeled away the goggles. The victim's mouth fell free, shock and horror choking a sob from his chest as black feathers ruffled the creature's head, silky smooth, dark as ebony.
It was a face he never imagined to see again. A face he'd thought lost. A face he'd imagined finding joy in reuniting with.
But the red in those eyes, the attire on its body, the way his once friend had beaten him to a pulp. The way he hung over him now like prey, like a bug awaiting a shoe.
This couldn't be the same person. How could it?
"T-Toko-"
A black clothed hand took his neck in hand and he gasped out the rest of it, fresh tears bursting from his eyes in total fear and despair.
"Toko...yami?"