Shinka No Tamashii: Chapter 1 - Prelude to Darkness

It was the 13 of November, 1936, a cold, miserable day. However miserable was a terrible understatement. There was a raging thunderstorm, one of the worst in years, the rain was pouring so hard it was almost cliché; the only good thing about it was that you couldn't smell all the blood.

A single drop of rain fell, it fell rapidly onto a four leaf clover. An outstretched grasping hand had been reaching for it, but it never reached. The man it belonged to, bruised and bloody, couldn't reach it. In his last moments, hope was all he wished for. The scene before him was an absolute massacre, bodies stabbed, cut open, and headless. This man was the second to last victim.

At the very peak, a cliff overhead of a large pagoda, were two figures, blanketed in darkness. 

"W-Why would you do this?!" screamed the taller one, no response was given. 

Instead, a katana was unsheathed, and the one responsible for the bloodshed rushed towards his target. Struggling to raise his sword, he tried to speak, but words escaped him. With a flash of lightning, he was pierced straight through the heart, his killer was expressionless, save for two hollow looking shadows over his eyes, staring with no remorse. He bent over and whispered to the dying man's ear,

"Do not fear death, the darkness will always be upon us, this is your release." 

With another blinding flash of lightning, he appeared to have wings to the dying man, but his eyes still soulless, seemed now to be of grief.
A teenage boy awoke, thinking to himself, 

"That weird dream again."  

Jake Leyton, a 15 year old boy with spiky black hair and blue-green eyes, had just awoken from a dream. It was 6:00am when he woke up to an ear piercing alarm. He fumbled around with the clock with one hand and finally turned off the alarm. 

"Ugh, it should be illegal to wake up this early," he groaned, putting on the half rimmed glasses set in front of the alarm clock on the bedside desk. 

He sat up and rubbed his eyes, thinking to himself, 

"God, I'm so sick of that damn reoccurring dream." 

For him, today felt different somehow, in his mind, the dream was more vivid, and he could remember it easier. He felt compelled to open the middle drawer of the desk. The family heirloom, a "dumb carved rock" as he refers to it, was found inside. Much to his surprise, it seemed to appear crystalline rather than the dull gray it normally would be. He simply shrugged it off as drowsiness and began getting ready for school. He got dressed in his usual attire, a blue polo shirt and a pair of khakis. 

For the most part his day was normal, he had a math exam in 3 period labeled by many of his classmates as 'the hardest test ever' although to him he just thought of it as simple geometry. His resent for most of his school's student body made him very antisocial out of many other reasons. Despite this, his only friend was one of the most unlikely people he would even consider talking to. His name was Mike Alden, he was about a year older than Jake and had bright orange hair. His personality could be only described by the song Pretty Fly For A White Guy, managing to be one of the only people in the world to be a benchwarmer in football, getting either rejected or dumped by nearly every attractive girl in school, and failing 2 of his classes. Despite all that he was delusional and held the belief that he was 'too cool for everyone else'. As everyone was leaving school the two met up walking to the buses. 
"Yo J-man, howsit hangin?" Mike asked.
"Oh just peachy"
"So you won't believe what I saw today!"

      As he rambled on about something about sofas and/or meat hooks Jake simply replied with "Cool story, bro" when he caught something in his peripheral vision. It seemed to be a person cloaked in black. He turned his head sideways and looked at it with a confused expression on his face.
"Hey Jake...y'alright?" Mike asked.
"Yeah..."
The two got on the bus and went to their homes.  All the while Jake was riding the bus home, he could've sworn that someone was watching him, although again he dismissed it as just delusions from all the creepypasta he'd been reading lately. 

"Hey Jake, can ya do me a solid?" Mike asked after putting his phone away.
"Whatever, what do you want?"
"Well I gotta go somewhere tommorow, and there's a friend of mine that has something for me, can ya stay after school to pick it up for me buddy?"
"Yeah I guess, my mom's gonna be out drinking so I guess it'll be a good chance to ride the bike I haven't used in a year." Jake replied while yawning and looking out the window. 

Even though he knew he was just acting superstitious, he couldn't help but think that something was amiss.

      The next morning was irritably cold, even for early April, although it had warmed up substantially by the end of the school day. Jake leaned up against the wall listening to his iPod. At around 3:00 he began getting impatient and started walking back and forth. 

"The hell even is this package?" he thought to himself while pacing. 

Just as he was trying to figure out why he even agreed to do this in the first place, he noticed the masked figure again. He turned around and stared at it, it was wearing black robes and a cape, it was wearing a white mask with hollow eyes, white shoulder pads and white boots and gloves. 
"Hey stalker! What's with the get-up?" Jake said rather snarkingly. 

"Not in a good mood so just go back to your damn anime convention!" 

The figure grabbed a crystal from within it's pocket and tossed it to Jake. 

"The hell? How'd you get this rock?!"

      Mike walked into a two story pagoda, located on a hill densely covered in trees, the trees were so dense around it that you would have to either look over top of it or go on a specific path to even see the building. 

"Yo Chie! You find him yet?" Mike asked. 

In the room to the right was a little girl, no older than eight sitting at a computer. Her hair was a very light blonde and in two large pigtails at the top. 

"Yeah he's there" she said, never turning from the monitor. On the screen was a first person view of Jake, she was controlling what was actually a robot inside that mask. Before she was able to speak through the microphone, the screen went to static but not before emitting the message "Auto mode activated". She loudly exclaimed "What the heck?!" before noticing a rat chewing on the wires under the table.
"You left the door open didn't you, Mike?"
"Umm...no"
"DON'T LIE TO ME YOU STUPID IDIOT!" she said, slapping Mike across the face hard enough to knock him over. 

"Get down there and save the poor guy before he's cut in two!" she said. 

As Mike stood up and ran out she followed him. 

"And he still didn't shut the door..." she muttered to herself, crossing her arms.

      Jake let out a bloodcurdling scream, the robot had attacked him. It's sword, a tsurugi with a pinkish-gray hilt, had nearly cut his right arm. There was an inch long horizontal gash just above his right elbow. With a look of absolute horror and pain he ran away as fast as he possibly could. After about two minutes straight Jake began to slow down, with the machine catching up to him. He fell down and stared at the hollow eyes staring at him, the sword was thrusted towards him. In a fiery blaze, Mike appeared over Jake, blocking the machine's attack with his own sword, a three foot long, ten inch wide single edged sword with a copper colored hilt. He attacked the machine, clearly overpowering it and then cutting it in half straight down the center. Mike picked up the now passed out Jake and began running to where he came from.

Author's Note

I just wanna say this real quick, from the first 5 chapters of this have been written a year ago, so don't expect anything stellar YET. Feedback though, is still always welcomed.