Origins of Blood (RE)

Steps feel lighter when you know you're walking toward something you've longed for, something you've carved into your bones through loss; at first, it feels like the world has been set upon my shoulders, each step dragging as though I were defying the will of fate itself. It feels unnatural, like strings tethering me backward.

Yet with each step, the cord tightens, and when it finally snaps, there's release. A strange kind of freedom. It's impossible to explain to anyone who hasn't felt it themselves. But I feel it now, and it comes only in the rush of killing, in the warmth of drinking others' blood.

My hair prickles on end, my joints stiffen and grind as if they've rusted shut from age, only to be forced into motion. Sour vomit lingers on my tongue from half an hour ago, yet beneath it burns the sweet salvation of the rush; my blood seethes, scalding beneath my skin, flooding into every cell as if I were reborn.

I know this won't last long. I know each time I surrender to it, I push closer toward the end. But I cannot—will not—stop. Ever.

My body moves on its own, possessed. Perhaps that's the excuse I give myself—that it isn't truly me—that something greater and darker guides these hands. But the truth is simple: the rush is mine. It belongs to me.

Running through the streets, the night seems hollow; lamps flicker dim and scarce under a starless sky. Only a few faint points above bear witness. The rest are shadow and silent.

Still, I run. My body scratches against itself from within, craving something not yet tasted, not seen, not yet claimed. I run and run, until there's nothing but breath and bloodlust—and then, at last, I see him.

A stranger beneath the roof of some shuttered shop, an empty street with no lamp to shield him. He's cloaked in the waning glow of the moon, the only light still clinging to this place. He doesn't know, he doesn't hear the weight of death rushing at his back.

He doesn't understand that by standing here, at this hour, he has already surrendered everything.

But it doesn't matter.

My fist cracks against him from behind, his skull colliding with the ground. I slam him again into the asphalt, and his blood runs cold while still warm.

I don't look at his eyes. I don't care to. I only grind my teeth as I pummel, saliva spilling between clenched jaws.

His breath falters, that faint rattle of a soul preparing to depart. "Who?" He asks, his breath fading utterly, blue blood streaming all over the cold asphalt.

No escape. Not for him. Not even for his soul.

I strike until my knuckles tear, until veins writhe beneath my skin like worms, crawling in twisted spirals.

My vision drowns in crimson—not scarlet, not simple red, but a deeper shade, thick and suffocating; it fills me, slows my rage into something colder, much heavier.

My fists are drenched blue with bruising, yet I lick them anyway, my tongue dragging across the iron taste, sweetness following shortly after—then I press my mouth to the wound torn across his head.

My body trembles—stiff—as though rust corrodes every joint, but it obeys enough to swallow.

Pulling back, the man's body—a hollow shell, thin and even more fragile than Cham—I frown, and suddenly a breeze of wind brushes my clumsy hair to the side.

No name, no face, and no memory.

He was nothing to begin with, and less than nothing now.