Clouds had choked out the sky. The stars and moon were hidden away. The sea of diamonds had turned into a sea of ink. Every few minutes, an arc of lighting would strike its birthplace within.

'Why is everything so darn dark at night!' A young girl growled at the situation she was in.

Ruby was still in the clothes she fell asleep in, an oversized sweater, shorts, and a red cloak. Even with the heavy clothing, the air was no less biting. There was something heavy on her back that she did not fall asleep with, a red metal case that was reminiscent of a sheath.

Her skin felt numb.

She could not see her surroundings with even a figment of clarity, only vague lines and shapes. Unknown sounds and clicks around her rattled her. When nothing could be seen. Everything was dreadfully ominous.

Something crawled over her hand.

Ruby shrieked and jerked her entire body away, hitting her head against a concrete wall. She could hear even more bugs crawling around on the ground. Ever since she was a child, she couldn't bear the crawling things, their unreasonable eyes, the skeletal bodies, those squicky eyes...

She winced and rubbed where the pain suddenly grew after the shock passed.

"…Yang?" Her voice hesitantly whispered. She received no response, not even a slight hum.

She really was alone. It was a feeling alien to her. If it could be helped, she wished such a feeling never existed.

Ruby took a shallow breath, careful to not make a sound, and felt her way towards an exit.

Cities had phonebooths. She could call Yang if she found one. Except she didn't have any money on her. Those things always needed a twenty lien coin to work in the movies. Or maybe she could ask someone walking around for help. Though, she was told not to trust strangers too willingly, especially if she was alone. Were there any police officers going around on their horses at this time of night?

What time even was it?

She finally found her way out of the alley. The situation wasn't much better. It was still dark. Fog crept over the streets, making even open roads seem like mazes. Not even the streetlights were working, it seemed.

Ruby tugged her cloak further over her shoulders. She continued to walk slowly forward.

She passed by a dress shop. Plastic white mannequins were on display, dressed in luxurious fashion. It felt like their milky white eyes were following her. Ruby couldn't help but constantly glance back until the shop was far enough away.

A stray cat hissed at her before snatching up its mauled prey and slinking away

She thought she saw a person, but upon touching her hand and feeling the cool metal, it turned out to be another statue. The carved smile on her face with a smear of rust seemed to be mocking her. The statue creaked when she left it behind.

There was a sound ringing through the streets, but Ruby could not tell what it was, nor where it was coming from.

It didn't make sense to her that a city would be this quiet. Even the small town she grew up in had people jostling around at night. Why would the opposite be true here of all places? What had happened to everything?

'I'm not scared. I'm definitely not terrified... Any second, the clouds'll pass and then-' Her thoughts were interrupted when she suddenly tripped over something heavy and dense. She landed on her knees and tumbled forwards. She looked over at what the culprit was.

It was some sort of pillar, toppled onto the street and stretching into the road. She realized where it came from when her shoulder brushed against a severed lamppost. The damage was startling, as if a giant cleaver was taken to it.

A gust of wind nearly swept her off her feet. She prayed that it wouldn't start raining anytime soon. It was cold enough as it was. Her body was not the only thing to be pushed by the wind. Clouds parted to allow a faint whisper of moonlight to pass through. Ruby could finally see the city as it was.

The streets looked normal, so much to the point that Ruby felt it was deceiving. There was still far too much fog for her liking. She took a step forward, but when her gaze was drawn downwards, her legs hadn't moved even slightly. They were frozen in place.

Strange was it not? When her vision was obscured and her surrounding were unknown, the girl continued to move wherever she could. Now, she found herself hesitant to take even another step forward.

Instinct. It was an innate instinct within her that held her in place, a force unknown to her.

Within the darkness, the girl would have merely been an unknowing soul innocent to anything that would occur and be unaffected by it. However, should she continue to proceed further with the moon hesitantly guiding her way, she would become aware of something she'd be better off attributing to bad dreams. The world is filled with treacherous paths children should never walk into.

Be that as it may, something within her even stronger than her instinct nudged her to take another step. Every step she took seemed to ring through the ground. The sounds she'd heard earlier were becoming louder, yet no less strange.

She passed through a street filled with bars and shops, a street that should be busy and bright well into the night. She could see through the glass. The tables and chairs were as they were. Drinks were still left out. Clothes were still piled on the counter. Toys were spilled on the floor. Still, every door was locked, and every entrance was gated.

The wind blew in her face once more, lifting up her entire cloak and pushing her back. The fog was now gone. Ruby wondered if she should turn back and head the opposite direction. It felt like this entire area was abandoned.

Cars were flipped over, crushed, or torn apart. The buildings were lined with cracks and on the verge of falling apart. The canals were empty. Gusts of wind dived down and swept away debris. Thunder continued to boom in the skies above.

"...?"

Just at that moment, the girl had thought she'd heard something.

It happened a second time.

She did hear something, an unusual noise she wasn't familiar with. Ruby must've been very curious, for she chose to head towards the sound's direction. She found her pace to be speeding up despite knowing very well that there could be something she should not be anywhere near to.

The noises had gotten louder. It sounded like hammers being struck through against the ground, but there was an odd reverberation behind it. Now she knew that this was something she was explicitly forbidden from approaching.

When she arrived at empty crossroads, Ruby stepped in a small puddle that was slowly drying whilst leaving a stain. Even in the dark, she could tell that its color was red.

She heard a lady's scream in the distance as if she had swallowed glass before the sound was silenced.

She felt her heart skip a beat. Then she felt it thunder within her chest.

Bodies littered the street. Limbs were twisted and bent at cruel angles. A man was folded in half, his jaw dislocated while his eyes stared at the sky. None of them so much as twitched. The road was split in half, another man lay at the end. The bodies rested atop craters. Ordinary humans wouldn't have remained intact. These were hunters.

Her steps became slow and hesitant, yet they could not stop, watery eyes tracking the flecks of blood that formed a trail. Instincts screamed at her of danger. She hid herself as she approached, staying close to the street walls. When she got to a broken corner, next to a dark alleyway, she finally looked directly at what was hidden.

In front of her was a dark abyss. Its depths were unknown to her but staring at it filled her with a sense of dread. It was as if a god had impaled the world itself. Blood seeped into the edges and disappeared.

The twisting sensation in her stomach grew with apprehension. Such occurrences never happened back home. The worst incidents there were mere training accidents that were healed in a week's time.

'What in the world happened here? Why does the city feel dead?'

Ruby sucked in a sharp breath of air when a sound entered her ears. She could hear her heartbeat. She could hear her breathing. She heard her previous steps forward. Now, she could hear something else. It was getting louder. It sounded like a beating heart.

Sometimes, in the middle of the night, Ruby would wake up. Her eyes would not immediately adapt to the shadows, causing her very own room to appear foreign to her. Every corner seemed as if a monster could be waiting there. The narrow hall outside her bedroom door seemed like a gateway to a living nightmare. At times like these, she would stay under her blanket and ignore it all, as if what she did not see, what she did not know, would not be able to hurt her.

She peeked over her shoulder

A stranger was looming behind her. His hands were bare and strong, as if they were tempered like the metal of a sword. His smile was eerily familiar, like a dormant memory better left to oblivion.

Even while cloaked in the darkness of the storm ridden night, he seemed to incarnate raw force and brutality. His was a body that could go against the world itself or bear it on his back. A beastly mane of spiky hair fell to his shoulders. His neck was guarded by a shawl of scales. All he wore were a casual jacket and pants, leaving his feet bare, even when it was so chillingly cold tonight.

The street seemed to rattle with every breath he took. He stared at her as if her flesh was made of glass and he could see the blood flowing through each and every vein.

He rubbed his chin, seemingly deep in thought. Then, he raked his fingers through his hair and sighed. Bending his knees and leaning forward as if he were sitting on an invisible chair, he gave Ruby a little wave now that he was eye level with her. His smile showed off canines sharper than daggers.

"Hey there, thought you were a tiny walking blanket at first." His voice was tainted by an odd dialect and resonated with notes of fury and unrestrained deviltry, carefree and reckless in nature. It was a voice that would spite God. "You shouldn't be awake at this time or you'll stunt your growth. Need to get your sleep if you want grow big and strong."

Ruby took a step back, getting dangerously close to the hole in the ground. "…Hello?"

"What are you doing out here?" He didn't sound angry, but at the same time, it didn't quite sound reassuring. It was like an innocent question from man eating monster.

She briefly hesitated, "I just sorta woke up…"

"Oh, is that so? Guess it can't be helped, then." He surprisingly accepted her answer without any fuss. The smile on his face never wavered. "Are you lost?"

"Y-Yeah." Ruby glanced at the unwelcoming pit behind her, wondering when he'd ask about it, unless he already knew about it somehow. He didn't seem bothered by it.

He waved her over like she was a stray kitten, "Come on, if you just wander around all night, you'll catch a cold at your age."

Ruby followed five paces behind him, at least until she was away from the pit and out of the alley. "Wait, there's… a lot of people are hurt over there. I don't know what happened but I think they were a-" Lighting flashed down from the clouds again.

The street was empty, empty craters and empty sidewalks. The bodies were gone. Ruby looked everywhere with wide eyes but could see nothing. Tonight was feeling more and more like a lucid nightmare.

"What's wrong?" The man stopped to look back at her with his pitch black eyes that swallowed light.

She flinched when thunder boomed above. Rain started to pour down.

A heavy jacket was tossed over her. It felt like it was draped over a fireplace first, instantly warming her up in the cold city.

"Thankyou." She nudged the jacket away from her eyes so that she could see. Ruby looked around at the silent streets of the city. She looked up at the stranger's face to get a better look at him. It was still too dark to see everything clearly. The rain made it worse. Even the moonlight vanished again.

Ruby rubbed off the rain that blew into her face. Her socks were beginning to become damp as well. A certain scent bothered her.

When she lifted the sleeve of the jacket and sniffed it, it smelled like rust. There was something that had a very similar scent to rust. The pit was surrounded with the same scent.

"Haa? That's strange. I'm sure I took care of them all, but they're gone now?"

Ruby froze. She realized where the scent came from.

"Say… is this really yours?" He held up a red metal item vaguely resembling a sheath. The smile he had looked rather menacing despite its seemingly innocent nature as he stared at what was grasped in his hand.

She hadn't noticed the weight lifted off her back. She hadn't noticed a lot of things, such as how his hands were flecked with blood. Ruby backed away as the man fiddled with the sheath as if it were a toy. The streets felt confining and narrow.

The man continued to stare at the sheath with dark, narrow eyes. "It's strange, the feeling from this thi- hm?"

The girl quietly took back what was hers with a firm tug and shifted away. "Sorry to bother you, I think I see my house from here."

Growing up in a small town in the countryside, Ruby sometimes felt her family was too overprotective. She wasn't allowed to go out alone. She was always rushed back inside the house when it got dark. She was always being cautioned. Well, it came from a place of love so even that made her feel a little happy.

Ruby thought back to when her family advised her on what to do if she encountered something dangerous alone. It wasn't something she was fond of. Somehow, even if it made sense, it seemed embarrassing.

Don't try to fight, just run. If you win at the very end, then you're the winner outright. In that case, just start with running. Nobody can win if they get hurt at the very beginning.

A walk turned into a run. A run turned into a sprint. People blessed with a strong aura were gifted heightened physical abilities, they could also manifest phenomena unique to themselves. These were called Semblances because people thought they showed the nature of the soul.

The girl's semblance granted her breathtaking speed, perhaps she could be considered the fastest in the world in a way.

She ran for kilometers on end through dark streets and alleys, taking swift and rapid turns as she went. It was a speed that left sound behind.

Unfortunately, it had rained long enough to make the ground slick. Ruby stumbled and ended up skidding across the rough concrete. Blood seeped out of her scraped knees as she let out a little whimper. Looking over her shoulder, she could at least take comfort in that she'd lost the scary guy.

'Really, ow… his teeth looked really sharp…' Ruby was starting to wish she'd kept extra bandages in her pocket like she was told to.

Her beating heart finally calmed down.

Then the hood of her cloak was pushed over her wet hair. A chill ran down her neck.

The red sheath in her hand unfurled into a massive scythe of red, black, and gleaming grey. It was her very own weapon to fight against monsters. She forged it herself in the shed next to her house with help from her uncle and sister. It weighed twenty kilograms and extended two meters in its scythe form, the first of four forms.

It could cut through trees like butter and pierce through armored plating like nails through wood.

Her foot slid along the ground as her hips pivoted. She swung Crescent Rose full force at the man behind her.

It was a fast and clean strike that cut the air apart, but her body rattled as a sharp clang shook her weapon to its core.

The tip of a finger was pressed against the fang-like tip of the scythe, stopping it dead in its tracks. The path of the strike was halted at the peak of its momentum. Every second of her training and every drop of her sweat amounted only to this much.

"Hey, are you afraid of me or something? Am I really that scary?" The man with the scary smile looked at the tool used to butcher monsters as if it were a pretty butterfly that landed on his finger.

Her hands hurt. Her heart started to pound.

"You're rather fast, faster than me even. Though, I suppose the saying you can run but you can't hide holds truth here. Ah… what did I do… What did I do?" He knocked the side of his head trying to recollect something. "It's barely hot," he muttered under his breath. "None of those weak ones could even do it. Don't even feel awake anymore."

Perhaps this man was not quite right in the head?

'Why did he even hurt those people.' Ruby bit her lip and tensed her legs. A hand dropped down on the top of her head and gripped it lightly like glass.

"Alright, come on. I'll get you a chocolate milk or- " He just disappeared like a ghost.

A tremendous force impacted the side of his head. His body that was heavy and dense like tungsten crashed through the buildings as if he were nothing but a paper tiger in the wind.

Ruby blinked. Standing in front of her in a plain white shirt, soaked from head to toe in the rain, with golden hair that shone even in the dark-

"Sister's here!" Yang Xiao Long dived forward and enveloped her sister in a hug. It was a hug that could make all the world's evils go away.

"Yang!?"

She hugged her more tightly. "Are you hurt anywhere?"

Ruby ignored the sting on her knees. "No…" Her cheeks reddened. The night had been too scary, but it felt better now.

Her older sister bent down until she was eye level with her and wiped the wet hair away from her eyes. "I have a lot of questions, but for now, I'm just glad you weren't harmed."

"I-I got lost." Ruby muttered. The feelings of fear were replaced with feeling of embarrassment. "And everything was really strange." There was a lot she wanted to tell her sister, but she didn't know how to start.

Yang let out a cute laugh that perhaps wasn't befitting her age, as if telling her not to worry. "Looking after you never gets boring, I suppose." She smiled affectionally. "Ah, could you stay somewhere with cover from the rain for a moment?"

"Mn?" Ruby was confused, but not for long.

The buildings next to them shattered as the world seemed to tremble. Lightning arced down from the sky and struck the rubble, as if trying to stop what was to come.

Her sister clutched her cowl muscle and gave it a firm crack to ease some tension. "The big kids are gonna have some fun. Stay out of it, please, for me."

The woman turned away from her sister, pure malice replaced pure love as she stared at something emerging from a shattered gap.

A man with a scary smile showed a scarier smile. His eyes became overwhelmingly vicious. "I feel hot."

In this moment, the shackles holding back a great evil beast started to crack...

And unfortunately for the child, there wasn't only one monster in the city this night.