Everything was on fire.
Everything is still on fire.
Looking all around, the red-haired boy could only ever see... fire.
It... was hell...
It will still be hell...
He was in hell...
He is in hell...
How else was he supposed to make any sense of the screams of agony around him? Or the horrible agony across his skin threatening to put him into shock yet never following through? Or how the very sun itself had turned black and is now crying black tar?
Even still he will continue walking... He... was a good boy. Right? Mom and dad said only bad children go to hell...
Wait... mom and dad?
Did he... have those?
He subconsciously tries to recall them but doing so made him feel guilt so heavy he thought he'd collapse after...
No, if he wants to live... he had to shut those memories tight...
Besides, the smallest of chances that he ISN'T in hell means he can hopefully escape...
Hope... If he hopes... and that hope wanes, it'll be nothing more than temporary adrenaline... he has to abandon hope and just keep walking...
"Agh! It hurts! Please! Help!" A voice screams from underneath the rubble only to be silenced by the roars of this wicked flame.
By now... how much of himself has he given up by now just to keep walking? The last dredges of his memories of his parents reminded him of how he was such a kind-hearted and selfless kid... but even those memories were consumed...
Sorry... but even his kind heart was consumed by the flames...
At the end of it all, he vaguely remembered climbing up above a pile of... he couldn't tell... metal perhaps? Whatever it was, the pain only worsened due to how conductive of the heat the metal was...
The pain worsens further due to the sharpness of the metal... to the point where it was like he was touching burning swords...
However, even that pain was consumed by the flames.
Before the last of his hearing could also be consumed, he remembered the platform made of blades giving out and him falling through and getting covered in it.
In a desperate bid to stand up, he reaches out a hand to someone, anyone... but there was no hope... no wish to be saved... at the end of it all, the flames left him naught but a blank slate, an empty shell of a boy, a living corpse. Not quite vegetative, but pretty close.
But before his vision could truly give out, he saw a hand grab his faltering own, and suddenly, a golden glow enveloped his body. And he started to feel once more... Maybe not emotionally as that cannot be healed even with magic... but at least physically. And while the entire process was absolute agony as his nerves began to wire back in, at the very end, his body was allowed to be conscious for a long while.
That's... when he heard it...
It was the voice of his rescuer profusely thanking him for... something. The voice of the man who rescued him... thanking him...
As he looks up with his slowly recovering eyesight and sees the man clasping his hand while continuing to cry as he thanked him.
The look of utter joy on the broken man's face was forever engraved in the boy's mind. As well as two questions.
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Fate/Cursed Night
FanfictionDeath... in the end, the reaper awaits everyone. So how is it that he awoke in a hellscape still on Earth? Luckily, a man in tiger has come just in time to save him.
