CYSM//AMARGEDDON.

Monophobia.

Prologue I.

"Close your eyes, open your heart. Rest."

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Blue and gray painted the world, linked with the misery and hopelessness that followed it. The color red had long-since lost its meaning as a symbol for love and passion — now, it was associated solely with blood and gore, as the few beings able to partake in such niceties had devolved into soulless husks of who they once were.

Humanity was a heavy word with multiple meanings, yet to most, it served only as a term to refer to one's rationality, to their ability to think — which was a luxury in and of itself, as the majority of the world's population had either died or completely lost grasp of reality, becoming drones for The Tower.

Still — in the vast sea of misery, built by tears of the suffering innocent — a bright beam of red stood tall.

His spark glowed brightly in crimson, not only in the essence of the life he himself had spilled, but because of the hatred that, for decades, had festered inside his own mind.

Mono had long stopped loving. In his world, there was no space for frivolous activities like cherishing or admiring, may that be a specific person, the world surrounding him, or even himself.

What was there to admire, even? Almost a decade ago, a monster fell from the sky and twisted everything he knew to be reality, and eventually, all of it was shattered by a betrayal that even nine years later he couldn't bring himself to forgive, much less forget.

Perhaps out of hate, out of spite — Mono never allowed The Signal Tower to take grasp of his mind. Both in the literal and theoretical sense, or at least, he liked to believe as such. To call himself the one man that, through hate, had yet to succumb to the worsening inflammation of the world, was something that sparked the few remaining glimmers of pride he felt within himself.

Of course, realistically, he could feel how the effects of that environment had taken its toll on him. It was questionable whether Mono was truly free from the mutation, or if his chains had been sealed a long time ago, tying him to something far worse than death: Surviving, rather than living.

It had been nine years.