Something that I whipped up at school. Hope you guys like it. :)
WARNINGS: Character Deaths, MAJOR MANGA SPOILERS, Alternate!Timeline
Rating: M for the violence, language, and dark/adult situations (less on the sexually-explicit side).
Triggers: Grotesque imagery; descriptions of burn wounds and gory death that may not be suitable for younger readers.
Disclaimer: Kohei Horikoshi owns My Hero Academia and its characters. I only own the plot.
.
Higanbana (彼岸花)
Species: lycoris radiata
Originated and grown in East & Southeast Asia
Commonly known as the 'red spider lily', or 'the flower of death';
Has more than 1,000 names.
.
1. Prologue
.
The final battle was here.
The final battle.
Throughout the battle, the past haunted Todoroki Enji, circling around and around in his self-pitying consciousness like a crumpled, torn reel of memory tape in a broken projector. Such woodenness plagued him heavily with every move, yet the pro-hero was brought back to the present by the rosy, blood-red sky, full of billowing ash and the ear-shattering cries of battle—the enormous thundering of Deku's heavy air blows against Shigaraki, the roars of Gigantomachia—and his cold mantra that always jerked him out of such numbness.
Being a hero, Todoroki Enji thought, trying to ground himself in reality as his blurry vision shook with exhaustion, meant that you willingly sacrificed your own for others—with no complaints. No anger. With a solid responsibility, despite the risks.
Am I really a hero?
No. I know I'm not.
The brooding answer had made him reel when he first realized it after fighting a city-battle with the winged Nomu. It made him rock numbly from the shock and self-disgust that suddenly resonated from his broken rib cage—because he realized it 50 years into his life, and the truth was so different from his original, brazen delusion. Enji had always thought he was the very definition of a hero. Everything that was supposed to be a hero, instead of the mocking foolery that he thought All Might was. But now that the truth was revealed to him, Enji had finally acknowledged that, yes, All Might did deserve to be called a hero, more than then himself could ever be, despite how much he had originally disagreed with All Might's supposedly heroic methods...
For the last few decades, Enji had slaved away like mad, dreaming of standing high and mighty over all others on the summit, not caring about how he flung his family aside in the face of his greed. He still remembered how he mercilessly torn off the dried, matted bandages that were soaked in the burnt blood and tears of his youngest son, throwing them away carelessly—how he tightly bound new strips to Shōto's trembling limbs, curtly barking out to his sobbing son to be strong, to serve your purpose—
It pained Endeavor now to think that his family's worst memories were for naught. For nothing.
After ascending as the No. 1 Pro-Hero of the country, Enji had attempted halfheartedly to reason with the soaring sense of unease and churning guilt at the time. That he had done nothing wrong, that he had sacrificed something of his own, something that spoke of blue flames and cremated white hair. He told himself that he had sacrificed peace within himself that was from an inescapable envy, and that he sacrificed his childish, long-forgotten, and pushed-aside hope of to be free, to be enough—but it took the enlightening advice of an emaciated Toshinori Yagi and the Nomu battle, in order for Enji to finally realize that he had done something wrong.
Actually, he had done everything wrong.
Everything was done wrong, thought wrong, believed wrong, ever since he decided to become the pro-hero that outdone All Might, which was decades ago.
Scarring disappointment seared heavily in his chest when it had occurred to him in the hospital while treating his scar and multiple wounds—no, he had wrongly identified it—it was shame: pure, unadulterated shame, along with the regret and piercing guilt and the absolutely demeaning sense of living a life of a selfish, brutal fool.
It then powered his decision to do better, to serve better, to actually become the better embodiment of his realization… But it still stung—the indomitable fact that he spent his first 50 years living arrogantly, even proudly, as an utter sham of a hero and a father, and that he still had miles upon miles left to go, to rectify his mistakes—
He was sharply interrupted in his thoughts by a tsunami of azure fire lunged forward from Todoroki Tōya, who was like a menacing, charred onibi, consumed and reduced to blackening, glowering demon fire. The heat from the attack almost broiled the oxygen out of the air surrounding Enji—it crackled cruelly from the familiar, wrathful firestorm of his eldest son, that was of power and of heat. Bounties of endless power seemed to radiate from him, despite how his body was painfully crumbling to black ashes.
With his skull resonating with dizzying heat, Enji remembered faintly that he had savored that same power while training his son many years ago—but the sight of the numerous trickles of crumbling ash that swooped downward from Tōya's body, performing a bizarre little dance of embers in the win horrified Enji immensely. It took him everything to remember that it was chunks of his son's burnt flesh that were sacrificed for such force—
It was instinct that made him move. Not his mind. With his eldest son, it could never be his mind.
"What's the matter, Endeavor?—Too ashamed to fight the past?!"
Yes.
"...Tōya, you should be ashamed!" Fighting his weariness and ignoring his mind's inexplicable answer, the pro-hero managed to blast aside the remaining waves of cyan flames at the very last second. "I admit that it was myself that drove you away! But I—" His own fire sputtered as his core weakened, as if sensing his owner's inner turmoil,"—I am not the excuse for you to murder innocents in cold blood!"
But I do feel like it was my fault—No, it is my fault that those innocents suffered at the hands of my son, IT IS MY FAULT–
In instinctual defense, Flashfire Fist was already used. Prominence Burn was already used. Doubt about Enji's remaining firepower was already raging rampant, stirring up a frenzy of worry in his gut but the red-haired pro hero crushed the unease away. He would go Plus Ultra. Beyond his limits. Like never before.
But he couldn't. He couldn't fight against his son, no matter how much he tried. Even if his fist actually lifted in order to try to finish his son off, his trembling arm would falter. Enji's eyes would freeze, along with his heart. And now, despite being on the defensive, Endeavor desperately avoided looking into his son's menacing glare, when before he had stared hard and square into his son's face in infuriated righteousness.
"Ashamed? I should be ashamed?" Tōya howled with laughter before baring his teeth, drunk on vengeance as his own muscles and tendons sizzled furiously. The stomach-turning stench of burning bones thickened around them like a poisonous fog. "How ludicrous! Why should I be ashamed, Endeavor? The time for harvest is now, and I'm the fieldman who holds the scythe!"
As his blackened flesh bubbled and melted away, the monster-like villain reared back his arm and hurled forward an arch of azure fire without remorse… And as the blast roared upon him to swallow him whole, Enji felt something akin to numbness—a sudden petrification that rooted him straight on the ground, a sudden something that told him—you deserve this, you brought this upon yourself.
You know why.
Now you must bear it.
For the first time in his life, Endeavor's quirk lowered its head in shame, and obeyed.
His body curled forward. His ribcage shuddered. And for the first time in his life, as Enji bore the brunt of the flames, all he could do was endure, endure the blast. Fire shredded manically across his eyes, snapping and crackling bloodily in his ears with a cold vengeance, full of a cyan fury, and for the first time, he felt the blistering pain—
Tōya's attack had actually ripped through his hardened invulnerability to fire.
It was a first, a first in a whirling list of grievances that Enji Todoroki endured throughout the last years of his laughingly rueful life, that his own quirk, his own birthright, had unexpectedly folded in its allegiance to him.
It's impossible.
But the sickening odor of his burnt and bleeding flesh offered the unthinkable. His eyes smartened.
Noticing how his father hunched over with concealed pain, Tōya burst into a fit of hysterical, victorious laughter. "Finally, the reaping's started—with the finest rice being reduced to cinders first!" He rushed another turquoise wave of scorching agony over Endeavor, and the pro-hero's muscles trembled. "First becomes last, last becomes first, Endeavor! Haven't you always taught me that?"
"Dabi, stop this immediately!" With a wrathful howl, Burnin' had appeared from fighting her opponent with furious fists on the other side of the terrain. She angrily swirled globes of viridescent fire at him who staggered violently, mostly out of surprise than of the assault. "Endeavor! You should go—I'll cover you!
"No, Burnin'," Gray dust speckled his scorched red hair, as every guttural word Enji uttered was battered with acrid pain while he hunched over, "When I crush my ear piece - you, the others - all go out of the area…"
Registering his words, the heroine whirled back to face her superior with an expression of adrenalic shock. Her green hair snapped and crackled with horror. "But, sir, we can't just abandon you–"
"My last order, Burnin'." Grimly ashen-faced, Enji narrowed his eyes at Tōya, who was beginning to rise from the ground, swaying with a certain, rising rage.
"But Endeavor, you can't give up like this, your own name begs to differ!"
"I'm not.. going to." Fierce blisters oozed singed, searing blood into his mouth, and Enji spat a glob of the coppery, red iron onto the razed earth. " I'm only.. going to make sure.. that he comes back home.. and that's the only thing that matters—"
Despite seeing his dirt-stained lieutenant stunned, confused as she tried to comprehend his cryptic words, Enji inwardly made his decision, his determination hardening and freezing to a cold sorrow.
All of his blood-stained shame would be gone. Gone with a resigned resolve, a finality that would lift his misery at last—ending his gilded hero career with a sudden curl of smoke. Bringing his son, his former pride and biggest sorrow, back to home, would end the cycle that he started for good.
Yes, it would be infinitesimally hard. Yes, it would hurt. But Endeavor knew his wrongs—and Tōya… Tōya was forever his son. Nothing could change the truth.
"Endeavor… " Making it to his feet, the said son almost collapsed again as he laughed gaspingly, ending with a lung-crumpling wheeze. The distant chop-chop of the helicopter was heard as Tōya spread his skeletal hands. "Why do you still try? Have you not realized that you should have gave up since everything has all gone to irreparable pieces?"
"Yes, everything has gone wrong, because of you and your fellow villains!" bellowed Burnin', fiercely defending Endeavor before cleaving forward a crescent of green flames.
"Oh, no. It wasn't because of us," chuckling sadistically, Dabi crushed the assault aside with a curling of his blue flames, "It was because of your actions, you hypocritical heroes! Because of your actions, your legacy, Endeavor—your respect, your strength—it's all gone! I'm telling you again, Endeavor! Your demise was always–" Tōya viciously stabbed aside Burnin' with his fire as she cried out in pain, "always inevitable because of you and your flames!"
"Burnin—" His lieutenant's name painfully tearing itself out his throat, Endeavor could only muster another small surge of heat and flames—he desperately needed more time, needed more firepower. But the words of Tōya were like scalpels that dug sadistically in his heart, gouging out bigger wounds into him and his ability to bring forth fire—
"Why.. Do you feel more remorseful now because of your losses?!" taunted Tōya derisively with satisfaction, beginning to feel the startings of a final, euphoric victory, "There's only your life left now, bared to me! Not even your quirk can save you! A new age is beginning—perhaps you can beg for me to spare your precious Shōto!" He mocked, grinning gloatingly as his fire roared again to life, heat exploding in the area again.
At his words, something reared its head within Enji, listening intently through the excruciating agony of his collapsing body.
Only your life left. Nothing you can do.
Perhaps you can beg.
Suddenly his bruised, blood-bulging knees collapsed to the ground, bones creaking. Along with the motion, his scraped pride was grounded down to the dust. Endeavor's shins and hands collapsed with tremors onto the gravel, and the pro-hero prostrately knelt on his peeling knees, his head painfully bowing to his son with budding tears.
Between father and son, gaping silence took its throne.
He probably thinks that I'm bowing because of my lost reputation.
But it's actually because... I have truly seen the error of my ways…
Ever since his city-battle, Enji wished for his son to be miraculously resurrected. He wished that his dead son would allow him to speak, allow him to ice his sorrows, his gaping wounds and resentments… Enji wished that Tōya would allow him to at least say his apologies—that he was sorry that he wasn't with him after Shōto was born, that he abandoned him when he was suffering, that Enji wasn't, no, couldn't act as the father that he was supposed to be, that Enji was truly, sincerely penitent for what he had done—
But now that Enji had this chance, even as his son had been actually alive and returned as his father's nemesis... his burnt lips refused to move.
Too much was wanted to be said, but only silence, broken with the fierce, raw burning of Enji's tearing eyes, remained.
Please.. Please let my vocal cords work.
Let them not be too injured.
But finally, his bloody lips moved.
"...You're right, Tōya… " His voice was tattered, slurred and excruciatingly slow, as if his nose was too bloated with blood and fluid. His cracked knees shifted numbly, painfully. "You're right… about everything you said about me… except for one thing."
Tōya remained silent. As if he couldn't believe what was happening.
Was it from shock, Endeavor thought with creeping despair, from the unexpected humble stance that he was taking? Enji didn't know. All he could do was to raise his face beseechingly to his eldest son, his skin streaked with blood, sweat, and dirt. The hostile turquoise orbs of his son's eyes glowed even hotter when they made eye-contact, the burnt flesh firing darkly on his face… but Enji saw with mounting hope that his son's wrathful glower had somewhat faltered.
"I still have my apologies towards you, and the rest of our family. To your victims… to my colleagues… to the people I've captured… to everyone in our society that you and I have impacted… and that guilt, that sin, is something... that I will never, ever lose," Swollen sores stabbed agonizingly in Enji's tongue and mouth, with his head and ears ringing shrilly with fever as his sweltering lungs cried with his towering guilt, "And though I've… offered my apologies to almost everyone—no matter how insincere they may seem—I still have you to confess my guilt for... So, as your father, not as a pro-hero or a public figure… I'm sorry, Tōya… I am truly, genuinely sorry for what I have done to y-you–"
At this moment, Enji's voice broke, and he dipped his head down momentarily to hide his tears. "So please, Tōya… please try to look past your hatred for me… I don't care if you hate me until the day you die, but please try—'' At this, Enji clenched his jaw in anguish as he closed his eyes and fought out through the overwhelming storm of despair, "W-We still love you.. Tōya, your family still loves you… Despite your faults, we know you can be redeemed. You're worthy… of being redeemed. You're worthy of standing up for. And I don't care about anything else but only for you to come home. So please, Tōya, please–"
Tōya began to laugh. The dead, burnt strands of his white hair flopped in the wind lifelessly as he drew his head back sharply, gasping with mocking laughter.
And through the growing chop chop of the helicopter, all Enji could hear was the echoing, deadened laughter of his son, and of descending, pure despair.
His vision tunneled, and all Enji could see was the streaks of blood on his son's flakey face, streaming from his bulging eyes. Flaring with wrath, the whites of his son's eyes showed in his unquenched rage… and at the sight, despair cackled even more ominously from the depths of Enji's psyche, destroying every sensation of feeling from his existence. It did not stem from his son's rejection of his olive branch, not from his crushed, nonexistent pride... but from the fact that the soul of his son was unsavable.
Tōya was too far gone.
Enji had been too late.
"Worthy?" Scanning the terrain with wild eyes, Tōya slowly breathed through his teeth like a rasping animal. The spurts of laughter that then continued to emit from him were hysterical, increasing louder and louder like an arriving emergency siren. "I'm worthy of being redeemed? That's bullshit—the only thing I'm only worthy of…. is squeezing the life out of you, Endeavor—!"
If only I tried harder, if only I'd realized faster—
"And to think that I actually came back home… after my 3 year-long coma. Revolving around you for all my life… how pathetic of me..!" Tōya wheezed out a screech of derision even harder at the memory, "Despite my death, everything was the same. The past stayed the same, Endeavor! My death meant nothing to you—that's why I felt betrayed! That's why—despite how much I tried, I couldn't leave my axis as your satellite. I always gravitated towards you, pushed by your betrayal! And no one can defy the laws of nature, including me!"
With a stuttering heartbeat, Enji immediately exclaimed with growing panic, "No, you can, Tōya! You can—"
"So I was forced to choose–" Ignoring his father's plea, Tōya leered threateningly into Enji's leathery, soot-ridden face, "–from the only two choices in this life! Instead of being a satellite, I chose to be the asteroid that annihilates your world, Endeavor. And I've almost succeeded! But you say that you still have your determination to bring me home…?"
Dismayed, Endeavor stared open-mouthed in desolation at his son. Tōya's grisly teeth stretched into a cruel smile at seeing his father's anguish.
"Well, too bad."
Hearing the conviction, Enji closed his eyes in weary grief.
no. no.
No, Tōya, please–!
"So say your prayers now, Endeavor!" With a lofty triumph in his feral eyes, Dabi slammed forward his hands, summoning an azure vortex of fire and brimstone, like an ascending bonfire, "But I'm sure they won't save you in your new home!"
It thundered toward Enji, a sight to behold. A fiery phenomenon, soaring with human hatred and overwhelming, certain death.
What a beautiful way to die, the pro-hero thought with irony, dying by the very quirk that I was proud of all my life.
But while gazing at the vast swirling hurricane of fire that was about to envelop him whole, Todoroki Enji slowly came to a stark conclusion. The cold truth.
His son was unsavable. Therefore, Enji himself was unsavable.
And since Enji's son was going to drag him to hell, the hell that Tōya was destined for because of his actions... Enji might as well peacefully go with him.
Perhaps in hell, their relationship might be redeemed.
Tōya… It would be great… if we embrace each other in our new home.
It would be joyful if we could walk happily through the fiery pits of hell.
Together.
Through the maelstrom of flames and its deafening roar as it raged upon him, Enji's flesh gave out, fracturing and bubbling apart with his muscle filaments crumbling to ashes. The dying prickly sensation gave way to blood-sizzling agony—but through the sharp crackling sounds of his body's cremation, the pro-hero clutched his melting earpiece, crushing the plastic. Fuyumi... Natsū… Shōto…
Rei…
I'm sorry that it has to end this way.
Blistered lips pressed into a grim smile. On the bright side… neither of us will ever torment you again.
Farewell.
At the thought, every particle began to hum to life in his body once more, colliding violently with each other, resembling flint and iron as they sparked fiercely, desperately, urging his quirk to offer its last endeavor to its owner, and at last, it flickered—
Strong amber flames licked the air from his body, albeit a bit weakly, but even as his blood boiled his veins and arteries painfully, the pro-hero found his inner will to rise from his knees, drawing strength from his internal guilt. Cracking open his lips within the flames and sharply inhaling dizzying smoke, Endeavor summoned his last breath.
Plus Ultra. Prominence Burn.
Hellflame blasted from his body, resurrected for the last time. As it torpedoed behind his body like an exploding missile, Endeavor managed to lunge through the overpowering crucible of azure flames, hurling himself at his son as his skin flayed away, exposing more of the vulnerable muscle underneath.
My death needs to bring upon his as well— but hopefully, Tōya will stop once I get too close—He almost all but slammed into his son's skeletal body a few seconds later while choking wildly from the dioxide. "Tōya, please—"
Hurriedly dodging his father's wild lunge with a furious glare, Dabi gave out a guttural yell of frustration, "I told you this was the end, Endeavor! Stop trying—I'll never, ever–!"
"You're…You're still my son, Tōya!" The white-haired villain drew back in outrage at Endeavor's response, with his face carnally twisted into an expression of pure lividity. Endeavor staggered toward him as his nerves shrilly screaming in agony. "And I'll never stop trying because you're my son!" –And I will always keep trying, even in blistering hell—
At his father's words, icy cyan eyes flared with fiery rancor as Tōya immediately side-stepped around Endeavor, unable to blast his quirk at close range. Upon realizing this, methane-blue flames condensed coldly in his hand in a nanosecond. The villain hurtled back his charged, blazing fist while bitterly screaming, "In that case, give up, Endeavor!"
Then Tōya savagely thrusted his limb forward to gut his father, and with a horrified widening of his eyes, Endeavor helplessly watched as his son brutally impaled his chest with flames upon his gory fist. Splurges of dark, boiling blood and shattered rib bones sickeningly crunched on impact. With a twisted hiss of revulsion, Tōya removed his tainted fist out of his father's bayoneted rib cavity. The pro-hero crashed to his knees with a sharp inhale of anguish.
My son... actually stabbed me…
"Give up." The said son crouched forward to seize Enji's throat with his charcoal-like, brittle hands, digging in his searing claws painfully into the gruesome, peeling flesh. White-hot pain branded Enji's tortured neck, but he refused to oblige, shaking his head no. "I said, give up," Deadly calm with a thrashing flare in his eyes, Tōya yanked Enji's neck towards him; blood trickled from his vein-stricken eyes as he sneered into his father's face, finishing with a spat, "Give up, because your so-called son will be finally free today."
Tōya is too far gone.
Our fates are set in stone.
And this.. should be my last stand.
"I'm sorry, Tōya… but murder chains you down," Instead of wrenching his son's hands away from his neck, Enji only looked up at his son, unknowingly smiling sorrowfully in the face of imminent death, "It's quite a burden to wrestle for eternity. You'll never be free, even with my death. Though I wish otherwise, as your atoning, determined father."
A single drop of Tōya's blood alighted into one of Enji's eyes, and as he scrunched it away, Enji missed his son's look of pure rage—and for the first time, of bewildered devastation.
But before Enji could see, bright blue flames then dissevered explosively into his neck, and as Enji's vision rang and died with the soaring heat and light, Tōya howled with a finality. With his heart weeping, Enji managed to fold his bloody, flesh-wrangled mess of his limbs around his son, agonizingly holding his son tightly, with one gruesome chunk of a hand cradling the back of his son's skull in long-awaited embrace. Tears evaporated from his eyes, as Endeavor released the last embers of his quirk. Hellflame erupted within the two, crackling ferociously. Tōya, please hug me before you die—again.
Realizing sharply what his father was doing with a cry, Tōya released his hold and fought madly to break free from his father's makeshift prison. Yet with the last bit of his strength, Todoroki Enji tightened his pulverized arms of bare bone into the hug that he regretted not doing for the past 13 years. Fighting with his last bits of consciousness, the pro-hero then slumped into the crook of his son's shoulder, murmuring his last words into his son's crumbling ear through the blasting flames.
"Tōya, I love you."
Enji wasn't sure if his son heard.
But the struggling finally ceased, and Enji thought he heard his son sobbing.
In tears of revelation, Enji held him tighter in torturous regret, sharply remembering the words that his wife said to him years ago.
You were right... Rei.
Tōya just wanted to be loved by me.
Me. A very foolish, arrogant human being...
His jaw quivered in remorse as the pain drifted away.
And as the father and son gave up their souls to their blaze, the whole world burst into a shattering mosaic of bright, venomous amber-blue stars in their disintegrated eyes.
.
.
A few days later
The wind lifted, stirring up the bony gray ashes of father and son on the earth of dried blood and of meaningless battle. How lightly it scattered, as it swirled throughout the air—dried, crumbling, nameless matter to all. But to a select few, it was the last few pieces of a family that was torn apart by greed and hatred.
The wind keeled, rolling through the country—the ashes a passenger on its back—and each fragment drifted downward as they were thrown overboard one by one… until at last, only one granule remained, stubbornly holding on to the helm as if the cinder embodied the twin stubbornness that the father and son had.
It went spiraling through the atmosphere by an unexpected gust, and was embraced by another piece of ash—one drenched with ice and gurgling blood, and of mother—and the two embers clasped each other, frantically, with a desperation of a mother and son meeting after 15 long years and a lingering sadness that they finally reunited not in life but in death - and the parents exchanged silent, emotion-filled sentences of—Why did it have to end like this, Enji? I'm sorry, it was all of my fault. …No, it's both our faults. No, it isn't - this all started because of me—and then the wind wrenched them apart, and the reunion flaked away.
While Rei's ashes dispersed among the rice fields, where her murdered body was burned as a revolting sacrificial pyre for the innocent killed by Dabi, Enji's ashes landed on the higanbanas of a nearby graveyard and soon dissolved in the watery soil—and as for Tōya… his dust tumbled on forever, bound to the earth by his heinous deeds and his unsolved want, unable to find peace and a life beyond.
And the newest dark age raged on, and a green light of hope flickered weakly but stood strong—
Until the earth tilted, and the sun and cosmos miraculously began to revolve backwards, all back to the time of a Shūbun that had occurred years ago, and the eyes of turquoise and slated gray opened once more, unanimously finding with shock that life hadn't ended just yet—
It had actually rewinded.
.
.
{A/N} Hello, hello! It's nice to see you guys! *waves energetically*
Now, I'm not actually sure of how this fanfic would go but I will try my best. It's fun to write it after all. The subject of Enji and Rei in BNHA is quite touchy and information is scarce about the two's backgrounds, so I'll need to gather information to realistically portray this AU.. This was originally going to be a one-shot, but I decided to have 5~7 chapters in mind. (Maybe if I come up with new twists and more additions to the plots, this might end with a lot more chapters than expected.)
Oh, btw. This story is not a fix-it. Perhaps I can make another possible time-travel AU fic in which everything is resolved happily, with Enji and Rei's children's resentment against them nonexistent, but I'm sorry to say that this story is not going to be like that. I like to think that this fic would have a satisfying bittersweet ending though.
And to my followers, yep. I know what you're thinking. My writing style was originally similar to this, but I decided to scrap it and let my writing run amok like a chicken with its head cut off in my first fanfic. It wasn't the greatest idea, especially when my writing was rusty. Like hella rusty. Do you guys like this style though? It's pretty updated, hehe. (Next chapter wouldn't be as that poetic or fantastical though, lol)
Anyway, if you readers liked this prologue, write some reviews for this author to snap up eagerly! I need it—this is me admitting that I'm an encouragement-starved being, haha. This took me a good month to write and polish this (mostly it was because of school), and… I don't know when this enthusiasm would die off. So, again, please review! (I need more support to start writing the second chapter!)