The Ashen Keeper

V3: Chapter 28

[On a far distant planet in the same universe]

.

The butterfly effect was a true effect. It meant that a butterfly flapping its wings on one side of the world could bring forth a hurricane on the other side of the world.

The blood of the dark soul used by the painter had spilt onto a dead world. There wasn't supposed to be any life on that world.

The blood spilt on this world far before the firekeeper arrived at this universe. It was an ancient theme.

From the black blood, evolved the great ones. The blood also gave form to the humans with the characteristics of the undead. Not immortal yet they hold the great strength of the undead.

But they were missing something fundamental to a normal human being. They were missing part of their immune system. This made them prone to sickness and death.

This caused the humans there to go mad due to the infections that spread rampant there. Their undead genes made them particularly prone to madness and going feral.

The disease eventually turn man into beasts looking to slaughter everything around them. Many attempts to cure this disease was made.

Every country on the planet was destroyed as the result of the disease.

This gave birth to the one and only city of Yharnam and the healing church. Yharnam is a towering, labyrinthine gothic city, home to both the Healing Church and the Blood Ministrations.

Although no ruling body exists in this miraculous city, one can assume that it was controlled by the Church. The Church focuses on healing by infusions of blood.

Miraculously, blood healing can repair wounds and cure or hinder diseases.

Yharnam's whole culture became focused on blood, even to the point of blood-based drinks surpassing alcoholic beverages as the most commonly consumed.

In the city of Yharnam, lived a family. A family of four that consisted of a mother, her daughter and her two sons. Nobody know who the father was, and nobody cared.

The mother's name was Maria. Her daughter was given the name Julia and her two sons, Marco, the older one and Fabrizo the younger one.
.
.
.
[Marco POV]
.
Mother has a below average IQ. This meant that she has a disorder that made her not as smart as most. Her cognitive abilities were inferior to others.

Yet, we were lucky enough that mother had only that disease and not much else. Me, my younger brother and my youngest sister all had different hair colors.

Her mother had pale blonde hair. I had brown hair. Fabrizo had dark blond hair while Julia had black hair. That's the type of household we grew up in.

A household struggling with the debt one of our fathers dumped onto us. I don't know how she got it, but somehow, she always had milk. I never hated the fact that we were poor. After all, we were never rich either.

"No, you have to drink your milk! Drink it so you grow tall, strong and, um... smart!", said our mother when Fabrizo complained about milk.

Mother was well aware of her condition and always feared that we would grow up like her. However, we learnt a little earlier than others that the world was a dark place with only family to rely on.

Fabrizo and I relied on pickpocketing so that we may ease mother's burdens. So that Julia may join the church. Mother sometimes went out late at night and came back early in the morning.

But the world is equally cruel to everyone. To the kind or evil, rich or poor or even to boys living in the slums. We were caught one day.

"Your boys were out there stealing money from people, so I taught them a lesson.", said the muscular man to our mother. He caught us and broke our arms.