The last coherent sound of Sora Hikari's world was the gentle rumble of skateboard wheels on concrete and the distant thunder of afternoon traffic through his earbuds. He was fourteen, a universe within the limits of his suburban Japanese neighborhood, the sweet fizz of Ramune soda still in his mouth, and the overall concern of Monday's math test in the back of his mind. He strolled the way he always did on the sidewalk, beneath the gentle sun of a Japanese spring day, the ginkgo tree leaves casting whirling shadows. A dull moment, like a thousand others.
And the universe fell apart.
No omens. No noise. Air in front of him appeared to ripple, not with the heat rising off the sidewalk, but with a strange, unnatural tension, like a bowstring on a koto pulled out taut to the breaking point. Homely colors – the green of sheared hedges, the mottled gray of the sidewalk, the pale blue of the sky – swirled, flattening into formlessness and meaninglessness like paint spilled into water. A shearing, piercing noise, like a million pieces of glass shattering at the same time but reversed, pierced his eardrums, silencing his music and the city's thrum. It wasn't a tug; it was a reversal. He felt a dizziness that was nausea, an impossible feeling of being inside out, his very self stretched and compressed by invisible hands simultaneously. Light was painful, disintegrating into impossible colorings, and then a darkness so overwhelming that it seemed to have weight and texture.
It lasted an eternity and the blink of an eye.
The landing was brutal. No gentle transition, only a sudden stop to cosmic dislocation and a jarring crash onto an irregular, ice-cold, wet surface that forced the air from his lungs. Stone. Unsmooth, jagged, covered in a greasy layer of cold, sticky mud. Pain flashed, hot and searing, in his right hip and shoulder. The smell. Gods, the smell. It slammed into him like a physical wall. The ozone smell of smoke in his memory was replaced with a pungent, choking chorus. Sickening, heavy smoke stung his eyes and lungs. The unmistakable reek of titanic-scale oxidizing iron – fresh and old blood in quantities that churned his stomach. And above it, a general miasma of stale sweat, feces, rotting flesh, and something else, something metallic and nauseatingly sweet-scented that churned his stomach and left a bolus of bile in the back of his throat.
The din. The whine inside his head withdrew, replaced by the clashing, raw bellow. Belly-shrieks, not shrieks of hurt, but shrieks of vicious fury. Puffs of rage and effort. The clanging, grating, repeated meeting of metal upon metal – not the crisp bell of a kendo dojo, but the shuddering, brutal clang of blunt metals meeting. The stomach-churning crunch of wood cracking under massive force. And dirges. Frail, buried beneath the total rage, but certainly there.
Sora forced his eyelids open, wincing against a thin, icy drizzle that had already stuck his black hair to his forehead. His school uniform – the black gakuran jacket, identical slacks, white shirt now encrusted with mud – now felt flimsy and pathetic, a gruesome jest in this terrible new world. He stood in what seemed to be the outer bailey of a medieval castle, or what remained of it after the numerous sieges. Brooding walls of black stone, worn smooth by centuries and scorched by impacts, stood ominously around him. Shattered battlements bristled against a low, suffocating dirty steel-hued sky. The light was dismal, the afternoon far advanced or perhaps it was perpetual twilight in this accursed land. Torch flames flaring and dying in smoking torches wedged in rusty brackets, or in hands shaking uncontrollably, cast a nauseating orange light that danced like a living entity out at the periphery of his sight.
And in the middle of it: violence. Uncooked, raw, desperate violence. He watched, a rush of ice water cold fear running through him, as he saw that he had entered in the middle of a live battlefield. A rough-looking mob of men – and a couple of women as ferocious-looking – clad in rags of leather and fur, bearded, grimy, their eyes red-rimmed with rage or some unidentified substance, were attacking the keep. They used ramshackle scaling ladders, jury-rigged grappling hooks, and brute body weight to try to batter down the walls. Others had in mind a fine dark wood gate reinforced with heavy black iron bands, battering it with a battering ram fashioned out of the trunk of a tree. They had an unequal array of brutality to hand: rusty-encrusted axes, nail-headed bludgeons, sadistic short swords, even simple cudgels and keen farm instruments.
The defenders, who lined the battlements and clung behind the great gate, were less numerous but seemed better coordinated and better equipped. They were dressed in black hardened leather armor, typically accented with metal plates for the shoulders and chest, and conical helms that encased their faces, some oddly bedecked with designs that were reminiscent of the beaks of birds. They repelled the assault with grim seriousness, shooting arrows with deadly precision to kill, dumping cauldrons of some dark, smoking liquid – boiling oil, Sora deduced with horror – and raining heavy boulders down on climbers trying to scale over the walls.
Beneath him, the earth was a sickening morass of mud and blood and bits of broken bodies mixed with the pieces of a broken battle. Bodies were strewn about everywhere, twisted in sickening attitudes. Some were neatly dispatched by arrow or sword wounds. Other bodies were horribly disfigured: limbs missing, skulls smashed, torsos split in two by hammer blows. The sickly sweet metal taste was overwhelming.
Sora doubled up in a ball, knees tucked to his chest, shaking like a leaf. Where on earth was he? What was the earth? Was this some advanced prank? Some ridiculously lifelike and sadistic VR experience? But the searing pain in his side was unambiguously real. The smarting chill of the rain and mud soaking him to the bone was real. The choking fear gripping his heart, so intense he felt he might vomit or faint, was painfully real.
Then bloodshot eyes alighted on him.
A hulking brigand, a muddy leather disc covering one eye and a scraggly, dirty beard spotted with… bits of food?, alone from the band that was overwhelming the gate. He saw Sora, a small, peculiarly dressed man huddled in the mud. A creeping, sadistic smile, revealing shattered and blackened teeth, crept across his creased face. He wielded a heavy warhammer, its metal head smeared with brains and blood. He took a step forward into the mud, mud squelching under his raw boots, hammer raised for the killing stroke. Sora closed his eyes tight, a strangled whimper cutting from his lips. Stiffened for the blow, for the darkness at last. Waited for the crack of his own bones.
Rather, he was greeted by a harsh, piercing whistle, almost a bird of prey's shriek, followed immediately by a wet, gagging sound, a sickening gurgle.
There was a tense moment of silence. Sora shuddered and slowly opened his eyes. The braced brigand, bloodied and patched, was on the ground at his feet, shuddering weakly in the mud. A long, black-fletched arrow, its point constructed of dark, shiny feathers – feathers of ravens, he recognized with a chill of unnatural certainty – protruded neatly from the hollow of his throat. Blood pounded thickly about the shaft, pooling darkly, mixing with rain and mud, almost splashing Sora's white sneakers, now irretrievably stained.
And then she was there. Like a shadow sliding off the more profound darkness of the inner castle archway, she emerged into the whirling torchlight. Her movement was a lesson in contrasts: liquid, soundless, almost uncanny in its loveliness, yet with every step that seemed to uncoil menace, a deadliness that had been honed and was set so sharply against the sloppy, bumbling ruin around her. She was tall, lean but heavy-muscled. She wore armor of black leather, shaped to fit like a second skin but clearly functional, with dark metal plates – blued steel, perhaps? – at shoulders, forearms, chest, and greaves.
The metal never reflected; it sucked the light in, giving a gloomy, hunting aspect. Her dark hair, dark as a raven's wing on a moonless night, was pulled back in a tight, long braid that flowed down her back like a black cord. She wore no helm, and so it was possible to catch a glimpse of her face. It was a face of gaunt, almost carved beauty: high, pointed cheekbones, a resolute jawline, thin, pale lips compressed into a line of disapproval. Her complexion was pale, almost transparent in the light of the torches, so that her eyes seemed even more prominent
.They were dark, impossibly dark, and deep, surveying the battlefield with unhuman calm, evaluating, noting, rejecting. A thin white scar bisected her left eyebrow, a small imperfection that only served to make the hardness of her face look even more unyielding. Clamped in her right hand, her black leather-gloved, was a slender, long, straight-bladed, narrow-bladed sword made of a black, almost colorless steel that seemed to be drawing in light. Crimson crimson blood fell slowly from it, each drop slapping the stone with a soft tick.
From her stance and the aura of authority she gave off, Sora would have put her in her late twenties, but there was a quality of agelessness, a hardness-brought-to-heels look to her eyes that gave her the appearance of being much older, or perhaps ageless.
Her very presence had a physical effect. The castle defenders seemed to stand up straighter, their war cries taking on a new edge, a new ferocity. A snarling shout erupted among them, carrying above the din: "Kurotsuki!" The attackers, on the other hand, obviously faltered. The momentum of their charge wavered. Some, closest to the archway, even backed away instinctively, fear momentarily replacing the rage on their dirty faces.
The woman – Kurotsuki – advanced into the thick of battle. She did not run; she sprinted with a crafy quickness, her feet sure and measured on the treacherous ground. She deflected the back-swing of an axe with an almost contemptuous ease, the blade screeching harmlessly past her skull. Not missing a beat, her black sword cut a short, precise arc, diving to the hilt into the side of the attacker below the ribs. The man had a strangled gasp and collapsed. Before the corpse could hit the ground, she was turning already, the sword dropped with a spin. She deflected the chopping chop of a short sword by a ringing ring, pushing the blade away. Her response was instantaneous: a swift slash that slit the second man's throat from ear to ear. Dark blood spattered the air.
She moved like a death dancer. No unnecessary movement, no suggestion of struggle. No berserker fury in her attacks, no fear in her defense. Only cold, calculated, merciless efficiency. It was an economy of killing, a killing choreography performed with a precision that was both mesmerizing and abhorrently frightening. She was the calm center of the storm of violence that she generated herself. And then, her black eyes fell on Sora. Still kneeling on the ground beside the body of the brigand she had slain, a small, strange, shaking form in mud and blood. For an instant, the world held its breath, as though it too was waiting. Fighting went on all around them, but in this instant, nothing existed but her wild eyes, locked on to him.
She tilted her head to one side, as a bird of prey might consider some strange beast. A glance of unreadability swept over her pale skin. Not surprise, not quite, nor straightforward curiosity. Something more complex, more profound. An excruciating, searing, near. possessive scrutiny.
With the same cautious consideration she had used to dispatch her enemies, she walked up to him. Attacking comrades, as many as they were, seemed to falter to attack her directly, of course giving way to her trajectory. She loomed over Sora and stopped, her towering figure casting a long shadow over him, blocking the meager light.
She kicked the spasming body of the brigand out of the way with the toe of her mud-and-blood-stained boot, with ghastly nonchalance. Up close, Sora saw more. Tiny raindrops glittered within her black hair like obsidian beads. The subtle sheen of sweat atop her temple. The subtle carving on the pommel of her sword: a stylized raven, outstretched wings, open beak in soundless scream. The scent that radiated from her was an odd blend: tanned leather, the chilly metal smell of steel and blood, but with a less dense undertone, almost plantlike, such as damp earth and trampled dry leaves.