SCARRED | TK

Prologue: SCARRED

Hi! Scarred is one of the books I wrote in my native language and I decided to translate it because it's also my most complex one (but I will make a lot of changes — for my Romanian readers)

Also, in order to help clear things up, I'll state that this book is a fallen angel! Au and a post apocalyptic world! Au

There might be disturbing concepts, such as religion, mental disorders and other triggering subjects but I will put warnings in each chapter.

Lastly, I hope you'll be enjoying it!

Also read the lyrics below because they're important!

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"Sea without a shore for the banished one unheard
He lightens the beacon, light at the end of world
Showing the way lighting hope in their hearts
The ones on their travels homeward from afar

This is for long-forgotten
Light at the end of the world
Horizon crying
The tears he left behind long ago

The albatross is flying
Making him daydream
The time before he became
One of the world's unseen

Princess in the tower
Children in the fields
Life gave him it all:
An island of the universe

Now his love's a memory
A ghost in the fog
He sets the sails one last time
Saying farewell to the world

Anchor to the water
Seabed far below
Grass still in his feet
And a smile beneath his brow."

The world wasn't the same as it used to be 70 years prior.

People no longer saw thriving forests everywhere they went, they no longer saw wild animals hiding behind bushes or birds flying above their heads and even them, humans, were no longer happy and hopeful.

There were no traces of humanity left because there was not much left of it. 

At least, not in that part of the world. 

Not in the Asian continent, the place that had undergone what people only saw in movies and read in books — the apocalypse. 

Most of the people living there were either killed by the nuclear missile that caused all that havoc or they either died by air poisoning after inhaling the aftermaths of the explosion — the toxic gases and smoke, leaving the cities unpopulated and the large buildings of which humans used to be so proud of to rot to oblivion.

However, some people did manage to survive the explosion due to their political power and economic influence so, in the end, politicians, doctors, businessmen, they all lived through the massacre.

They hid themselves in bunkers, hoping that their money and power would be able to save them from the misfortune humanity had brought onto itself but not even they were able to live and tell the stories for a long period of time. In the end, money and political power didn't hold that much influence while facing a natural disaster.

After 5 years passed from the well-known historical explosion, the virus appeared out of thin air, taking everyone by surprise and creating yet another massacre.

It was unexpected, new, and it destroyed not only Asia, but the whole world. It was contagious and it started spreading too fast, faster than anything humans had ever seen.  No one understood why it lasted so long for it to show its symptoms or why it spread all over the planet so fast but in just 30 years, Asia had already become a cage used to keep the infected in captivity, to keep them away from the clear ones. 

In such a world, a world so different from how it used to be, families did not know the concept of home anymore, money did not exist, humanity was no longer based on kindness and peace because no one seemed to care about the thousands of people who died on the deserted roads of that forgotten continent, their hearts broken in pieces because of the wickedness with which they had been treated.

In that world, nothing was green, healthy, full of life and happy anymore. Not even people, their hearts being shallow, full of wickedness and selfishness, mankind not even being a suitable word to describe them anymore.

There was no kindness left in them.

However, among the dozens of people who still roamed the deserted streets of those infected lands in search of shelter, there was a light.

Among the dozens of sorrowful, pale and sick faces, was a single boy with redness on his cheeks and happiness in his soul.

Jeon Jeongguk was born 65 years after the first appearance of the virus on the streets of an old, deserted, town. Some people believed it used to be astonishing there, full of people and exciting activities. Some even had ancient stories to tell from their long lost grandparents.

What used to be known as Seoul a lot of years prior was now just a deserted place — the tall, ancient, buildings being used as shelter for the people living there.

Those that roamed the streets were hollow, sick, just lost souls that were trying to find their way home, a sorrowful sight to see, something that gave little Jeongguk nightmares of images he's never even seen.

His parents were different, he had known from a young age.

His mother, who came from a place named Europe, was a beautiful woman and she even stayed that way after being infected, having ashy brown hair and blue eyes. His father, from what he'd been told, was Asian and Jeongguk resembled him the most. Even in such a cruel world, his parents managed to keep their humanity intact. They remained kind, shared their love with others, teaching Jeongguk to do just the same even if he never understood their reasoning.

He was too young to realize then that they were all, the whole world, just slowly dying because of a virus that they've never even expected to appear.

However, despite his parents' attempt at teaching him kindness, Jeongguk grew up differently.

He was not like the other children born there. He wasn't sad, sorrowful and full of wounds, with a pale face and a frail body.

At an age most infected children didn't even reach, 7 years old, Jeongguk was still looking healthy — healthy enough to make people think of him as different, as a threat. He had kindness inside him but, sometimes, his eyes changed, losing that sparkle he had in them, and he became different, cruel, like he was another person.

His parents, even if they didn't have much time left in that world, decided to leave and isolate  themselves in order to protect him from the glares he received, not wanting other people see that Jeongguk was indeed special.

However, one day, when the boy ventured too far through the city buildings, following what his father had previously called a bunny, Jeongguk was spotted.  The men who often came to those towns in order to analyze the condition of the infected ones caught a glimpse of a little boy who shouldn't have been alive at that age in a world where infected children died way too young.

Not only was the boy alive, he was even laughing.

That was the trait that set Jeon Jeongguk apart from the rest of the world. 

The smile he displayed every day was pure and innocent, a smile they haven't seen for at least 70 years.

That smile was going to disappear in a few years because of what those people were about to do to him. In a few years, Jeon Jeongguk wasn't going to be the same innocent boy as before anymore.

Through the years, scars will start covering both his body and soul, making the boy who was once considered the sole light that could overcome the darkness of the world lose its sparkle.

And everything would happen because of humanity and their selfishness, emotions Jeongguk had encountered in the past, many years prior.

And he had promised himself then that he would never forgive them.

He would never forgive those lesser beings, humans, and their selfishness.

He would never forgive them for taking everything away from him.