Silence ※

The view over Vatheon park’s lake was beautiful. Several of the Vatheon folk don’t tire of seeing it, despite their already being trapped in a watery prison. A few figures were walking on the sidelines, and some children skipped stones across its surface. Little did anyone suspect this would be where the next arrival would be. It was pitch dark, and an unholy hour for anyone to be awake, really.

A small area far off from the shore started to bubble a little, and a head dramatically surfaced, gasping for air. Hoarsely coughing out water, he slowly panted a number of seconds, before proceeding to sweep aside the long purple hair that was mangled all over his face. He flickered his eyelids flickered a few times, then tried to rub them when he couldn’t keep them open, just as anyone who just woke up. But of course, waking up from underwater wasn’t exactly… commonplace.

When his vision began to clear, all he saw were the far off lights. His first coherent thought was one of worry. He wasn’t too worried for himself, but actually for the people he had left behind… He hoped they could stay safe and level-headed while he was gone.

His next thought was that of reaching a shoreline. But, he grimaced, realizing he didn’t feel like it. Justifiedly so, too, in addition to it being dishearteningly far, he felt incredibly fatigued and sore, as if he had fought a difficult battle and wasn’t given time to recover. He had bruises and wounds which made different parts of his body feel all kinds of hurt. As hard as he thought, he couldn’t remember what happened before waking up. Did… did he die?

Not that this was what he expected the afterlife to be at all.
He expected to go to hell if he passed away. And this… didn’t look like hell.
But that was besides the point.

( . . . )