Beneath the weeping sky, the blood moon swelled an omen, a wound carved into the heavens. No longer the gentle blue that bound dreamers and drifters alike, the firmament bled crimson, staining the world below in hues of dying embers. Wisps of cloud, once delicate as lotus petals, curled like smoke from a funeral pyre, dissolving into the void.
Was there ever a time before this? A time when the heavens were kind? When the sky did not sneer down in malice, stripping me of even the solace of its embrace?
Frigid winds howled across a barren, ashen desert a wasteland worthy of the crimson moon's silent, watchful gaze.. Xu-er's porcelain body sunk within the dust-laden land, his smooth, slender arms resting in the embrace of the rough, grey surface. His bony fingers, having the scraping sand stuck between his silky-looking nails, with their white lines and specks left like a painting of the stars in the night sky.
Sitting up, lifting his malnourished torso, his smooth alabaster skin lay upon a bony framed ribcage. The sand beneath him seemed to stir, shifting as if alive. A faint hum vibrated through the barren wasteland, and suddenly, the grains began to dissolve not blown away by wind, but fading into nothing. Xu-er barely had time to register the unnatural change before the harsh terrain vanished, replaced by the soft, familiar press of a mattress beneath his back. The cold air of the desert became the faint scent of chocolate lingering in his room.
Despite the eerie atmosphere still lingering like smog, he felt a strange sense of comfort. Despite the enclosed space, it had a nostalgic chocolate smell that lingered through the house. Taking a step onto the cold wooden floor, Xu-er moved his fingers across the bedside desk, on which sat a wireless charger stand. Upon it rested his phone, lilac in colour. It was a hand-me-down from his aunt, its black screen tinged a shade of cherry red from the luminance moon's sanguine glow bleeding into every crevice of his room, faint yet very much present.
Moving through the familiar room, it looked just as it had this very morning. The soft, muted sounds of his footsteps abruptly stopped. The room fell into an eerie silence , though the thick haze of violet light had already defiled its integrity.
Xu-er, shockingly, moved his right hand to open the door, resting it on the knob.
"My hand?"
"It's ok… wah, wait a minute, why would it not be? Hehehehehe…" Zixu laughed to himself over his own seemingly unfound doubts. His hand had never been more real, especially with the dull throbbing pain. His cold, crisp laugh softly echoed in the small room, filling it with an aura of madness.
The short-lived episode passed as quickly as it had appeared. His limbs moved, but they weren't his at least, they didn't feel like they were. He flexed his fingers, watching them respond, but the sensation lagged, as if they were obeying someone else's command.
Opening the door, it swung open to a long hallway as Zixu walked through the door frame.
BANG.
The door had slammed behind Xu-er, causing him to turn sharply in shock. His gaze only found a damp wall, red and damp. Looking ahead once more, a seemingly endless hallway bathed in deep red, the walls oozing like open wounds. He stepped forward, and the floor shuddered beneath him. The cold wood pulsed beneath his feet like veins, sending small tremors through his legs.. Faint whispers scraped against his ears, soft yet insidious, muttering words he couldn't quite catch… except for one. His name. Over and over again, each voice different yet strangely familiar—a soft, feminine murmur, a rough masculine growl, and others drifting somewhere in between. They twisted together, melding into a mind-numbing reverb that throbbed at the edges of his thoughts
At the corridor's end, a door stood slightly ajar, a single noose hanging in its centre, swaying gently despite the stillness of the air. As Xu-er walked forward hesitantly, despite truly wanting nothing but to go back, he knew he had to continue. His gut feeling told him so. A primal heat in his stomach that somehow conveyed an unspoken intent, as if he were nothing more than a thread of that intent , connecting him to something…
The string cut through the bloody mist oozing out of the walls, heading towards the room filled with a void-like darkness that consumed anything in sight. All be it with an exception a mysterious noose with a withered rope extending seemingly endlessly, fading into ethereal red constructs weaved from omens-red threads. Mere steps before the gates to this mysterious noose…
As he moved closer, his foot seemingly sank into the red carpet, slowly rippling like a pool of crimson red. As Xu-er moved further ahead, he seemingly slipped, falling backward, comically swinging his arms like a new born crow attempting to fly. But this scene was soon cut short as jets of bloody liquid engulfed him, drowning Xu-er, invading his lungs like an infectious disease ravaging his body. The pain was indescribable a feeling of being filled with a heaviness, but this heaviness soon dispersed into a warm, comfortable sensation, despite still carrying a malice in its depths.
A sharp pain, however, forced Xu-er's attention away from the strange sensation. Feeling a rough tightness closing around his neck, he opened his eyes. In front of him, a scene of an endless grey desert surrounded a cliff-like edge, which seemingly enclosed his position in a circle. As he struggled to stop the noose from snuffing out his last breaths, he accidentally caused himself to twist and swing midair, allowing him to finally see where the horrid hands of death were fixed to.
Before him lay a large, fleshy tree, thick in its trunk, with small twitches moving abruptly and randomly across it, as if something was moving below its surface. It carried the same gut-wrenching red as the blood moon, its stature so imposing even the previously endless desert was dwarfed.
Xu-er's struggling eventually came to an end. He could no longer bear the burning sensation in his lungs and the pressure enclosing his oesophagus. His hands went limp, no longer clawing at his confining death sentence. As his eyes shut, he forced them back open, but there was no choice in the matter. A bright red flash covered Zixu's vision, this luminance shattering into a multitude of shards, each holding a flash of memories?
Hundreds, no, thousands millions of images invaded his mind, far beyond his ability to comprehend. A sharp pain clawed into his eyes, burrowing into his skull. Madning whispering.
Closer, closer…
hundred eyes…
天目不阖,昼夜长视 (the sky's unblinking gaze sees all, through eternal day and endless night)
the sky never sleeps
皮肤只是囚笼,骨头是锁链 (Skin is just a cage, bones are chains.)
Your bones hum beneath its gaze, do you hear it?
Listen listen it calls…
万骨成林,千血为川(Where ten thousand bones rise like trees, a thousand rivers flow crimson.)
the sky bleeds
A sharp yet soft whimper shifted in the stale air as Xu-er gasped, piercing the still air as he lurched upright. His chest heaved, lungs struggling to breathe as if the noose were still there. His fingers clawed at his neck, but… nothing. No rope. No pressure. Just raw, empty air.
The ceiling above him was bright, too bright. Fluorescent lights hummed softly, a stark contrast to the silence of the void he'd just escaped. The scent of antiseptic filled his nose—clean, sterile, real. He was in the infirmary.
As a specialist academy, the infirmary was in fact quite large, unlike most schools within his borough. Moving his hands to his throat, he felt a stinging pain not from his neck, but rather his hand. Or what should have been his hand. Now a clean-cut stump, still bleeding, but the blood had formed an unnaturally large scab that had covered his stump.
Which made no sense. A wound like this would never in such a manner , would it?
Questioning the logic behind his current state, Zixu failed to notice Eshan entering the infirmary adorning his face, a strained, playful , with a solemn smile.
"Oi,need a hand?"