HONOR // S. Gojo

00

Prologue

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    She ran uphill until her legs gave up on her, and she fell to the ground, scraping her already bloody knees and hands. Her muscles cried and begged with pangs of pain for her to rest for a second; but her mind urged, implored at her to continue further away from the scene... from the stench of blood and the presence of death.

Rhea quietly sobbed through her gritted teeth, her vision blurring with tears that soon fell to her clenched fists on the ground. She couldn't perceive anything, nor physically nor mentally, as if a hand had covered her senses, making her blindly relay on her instincts. Her mind was too busy trying to comprehend what had just happened back at her Family's Manor, her home that was now covered with the veil of death.

How could she not see this event?

How could her Technique fail in such way that she couldn't even think about this happening until the first bullet was shot and the first body fell to the floor?

Her mind couldn't make up any kind of explanation to the questions it did to itself. And using her Cursed Technique wasn't an option either, not even if she wanted to, she couldn't. The feeling of dread filled her insides as she heard multiple pair of footsteps approaching her at a terrifying speed. Rhea's lower lip quivered at the sound, quickly looking back on her steps just to realize the droplets of her own blood on the ground. Her hand flew to her body, trying to search for the source of it, until she felt it, she gazed down to the wound on her side... it wasn't deep nor mortal, no, but it was still bleeding through her shirt, and it had created a path towards her exact location.

"Oh..." she muttered in a shaky voice before pressing her hand against her wound, ignoring the throbbing pain that made her ears close off from time to time.

Rhea roughly wiped off the tears from her cheeks, not caring about scraping or staining her face with the glued soil and semi-dry blood, and stood up with the help of a tree. She couldn't stay there. She needed to get help... maybe her family was still alive and in desperate need of medical assistance.

Or was it her crippling fear of death that kept her going?

She didn't know, nor did she care and continued forward, limping as fast as she could uphill, she needed to reach help, something... someone, anything.

"For the love of God... someone please help me"

She quietly begged; the rustling sound of her own feet, the footsteps trailing close behind and her own heartbeat was the only thing she could hear at the moment. Her pure survival instinct unconsciously moving her legs to keep going.

"A clean bullet to the head and we'll get rid of this damned family!" Someone yelled from afar, making her flinch and press deeper into the wound on her side, ignoring the pain that arose from that action.

And just at that moment, a thundering pain that invaded her head made her legs wobble and falter while she trotted, making her roughly trip and fall with a loud thud. Rhea's mind crumbled down in the blink of an eye as she forgot about the people following her, letting out a shrieking wail, holding her head. Had it been a bullet? No, she wouldn't even be thinking at this point. She wasn't even reasoning, keeping with the wails as she tossed around, digging her nails into her scalp...  feeling lightheaded yet so, so heavy at the same time. Rhea saw faces she had never seen before, thought of people she had never met before, remembered places she had never been at... these memories were not hers.

Her mind wasn't even responding at this point, she became heavier and heavier by every passing second... until her sight began drenching in black spots. Pure silence...

For once in the last hour, the world fell still and quiet in her eyes, staring emptily at her Family's Residence downhill. It seemed so tranquil, so homely still, with all the warm lights turned on and the inside fireplace lit.

She felt something embrace her limp body, not with warmth, nor with cold... it was nothingness. Was this death's presence? She stared, yet she didn't process anything that happened next. Did they reach her? She didn't know. Was she dead? She didn't know. How long it had been? She didn't know.

At the same time her eyes closed shut, around the world... time fell still...

And the clocks stopped ticking.