Origins of Blood (RE)-Chapter 181: Ruby’s Cry (3)

“Aston!” A woman’s voice cuts through the ringing in my ears. Amber. Right—she’s here.

“What’s wrong with you?” Another voice follows, but it’s distant, fading like the world itself. My reflection stares back at me from the rippling blood below—my face fractured. It is not mine anymore. The tide licks at my ankles, yet I drown in it.

“Don’t come!” I scream, though I don’t know at what—the sound tears through my throat, raw and violent. I slap myself before Amber can reach for me.

Slap!

Still, she does. Her palm cracks against my cheek, snapping me from one madness into another.

“All dead!” The words rip out of me, hoarse. I already know the truth, but saying it makes it worse. My hands claw through hair, through the bones tangled in blood—small bones, large ones. “Don’t come!”

“Aston—” Valea’s voice behind Amber, unsure.

“Don’t!” I snarl before she can speak again.

Why? Men. Women. Children. All gone.

My fingers sink further into the blood—cold and warm, alive and dead. “Hell,” my smile is a blur like the bleeding moon. “They’ve brought hell upon us.”

I kneel, my legs buried in the remains of the living. “Don’t...” My voice breaks, half plea, half prayer.

Then—the light. That light. Radiant. Golden. The sun itself made flesh. It burns my eyes. My eye.

“Don’t come!” My voice cracks again, pain spearing through my skull. My left side pulses in rhythm with the fire in my head. Slapping myself again, the sting grounds me. Barely.

“We need to search for Leo and Delin, get yourself toge—”

I swat the hand away. “Don’t come!”

The light grows; the Golden brilliance stretches before me like judgment.

“Don’t come!” I beg this time, voice faltering. My mind flickers. The memory. The sky splits open.—theflood.

“We need to go!” Someone shouts—mine? hers? I do not know.

“The light,” I mutter, the words trembling. “Hell has risen...”

The vision burns out. Blood replaces Gold.

Red.

The bleeding moon devours everything. Cool yet warm. Beautiful yet vile. I smile, then cry.

“Aston, we need—” Amber’s voice—no, Valea’s. Two at once, but both shut in an instant.

The light vanishes, and silence follows.

Pow!

Both women are thrown aside, their bodies hitting the stone. My mind snaps back into clarity, heart hammering so violently it hurts. Breath floods my chest again.

I’m here. Alive. For the first time in what feels like eternity, I feel alive.

Blood. Everywhere.

“Weren’t those the ones from the sky?” a voice says—commanding, low, soaked in power. It rules the air as if it owns it.

“All are dead...” I mumble again, pushing myself up, my hands slick with blood.

“Wait, I know you.” The Orange before me tilts its head. His armor drips Crimson.

Amber and Valea are still on the ground, restrained by two men—both broad, both grinning as they press the women down. More people come who were chained to the Red-blooded only an hour ago.

My vision fractures again. The Golden light, piercing through my skull, through my eye. A hand. Screams—mine, theirs.

“The youngest of Rosenmahl!” the Orange laughs before me; his words cut through the noise.

Once I see Apollo—his Golden brilliance flickering behind my eyelids—then the Red moon, then this Orange, painted in the blood of those I swore to bring hope in what they have lost.

Yet, their corpses lie motionless. A sea of death. Their blood reflects the moon, for it could be colorless and still be of the same hue.

“But why are you here...” The Orange snorts, glancing at me, ignoring the rest surrounding us. “Why with them from up there?”

My heart slows.

“They’re the reason for all this, Boss,” another voice says behind him.

“Likely.”

I look up, meeting a wall of eyes—Orange and Green alike, gleaming with disgust.

“Well then,” the first one sneers, his smile sharp and bright under the Crimson moon. “You Rosenmahl’s are fucked.”

My heart stutters, once, twice—then stops.

-----A/N-----

Switch over to the Royal Road version. Origins of Blood is entirely free on it as well, so you would support me the most (if you want to read it for free). However, I also have a Patreon, where you can support me as a writer 𝚏𝕣𝐞𝗲𝐰𝕖𝐛𝐧𝕠𝕧𝚎𝚕.𝐜𝚘𝗺

—Bloody Potato out