Through Smoke and Ashes

Prologue||Him

His world, enraptured by darkness, gave him a sense of security. He was home. Something he didn't need to share, something he didn't want to share. Although, the blanket of a starless sky was also a place no one would dare consider residing in and making their home. Except him. He was darkness, after all, and he preferred to be alone, cloaked in the comfort of oblivion.

He didn't need light to see, for his senses stretched across the barren shadows, allowing vision no one possessed. Where others would be blind, he was able to see the most. Sensing inanimate objects became repetitious over his existence. They were ghosts in the back of his mind, knowing they were there but unbothered by their presence. Sensing only this, he was comfortable.

His strong fingers danced along a few keys to the piano sitting in the spacious music room, his thoughts wandering back to the last time he played this instrument. Centuries.

Lithe fingers haunted over the ivory keys as musical notes danced along his skin and intertwined with his wavy midnight locks. Memories kissed his eyes, lighting his vision with suppressed thoughts of the past. With his eyesight blurred with memories of tormenting and elating nature, he succumbed to his desire to remember.

Conversations were shared with others like him who passed into the next life. It was his duty to welcome those descended from his nature, sentenced to live the rest of eternity like him. Few shared his abilities and characteristics, few who could handle the loneliness of nothing but themselves and their own breaths. But even the hot wisps of air desired to escape and left without a trace of ever being there.

Time spent with those who entered his realm was short-lived as they moved to their own spot in this dark and shadowed world, leading to a desolate and dismal emptiness. But that was how he lived and was unbothered by it—most of the time.

It was in his nature to be secluded, but how he wished to not feel so isolated. So alone. And yet, he could not bring himself to want companionship. It was better this way, anyhow.

"Deimos," A whisper of a memory breezed through the air he breathed.

His fists slammed against the keys, drawing out an ominous sound to bounce off the walls of his estate. The noise trickled through the empty corridors, viciously snarling out at nothing in particular until it faded away, eaten up by the shadows.

"A new generation of riders has come to be." Deimos heard in the back of his mind as he retraced his previous conversation with the others.

"I'm aware," Deimos commented as he stared into the white eyes of a man with an unpredictable temperament. They contrasted with his own stark onyx eyes.

A dark and foreboding aura wrapped itself around six bodies. Deimos didn't need to see it to sense it; he knew it was there as he felt his comrade's energies float around him. He wasn't used to being around others. Their energies nearly choked him to death at the power behind them, but he was technically already dead, and his affinity gobbled the energy up like a starved black hole. The shadows swayed in his blood, coiling around his bones as they sensed the presence of their power. They whispered in his ears. Temptation grew ever more in his thoughts, but he learned to control himself long ago, and with a skilled mental barrier, he tuned the shadows of lust and greed out—a reason why it was easier and more practical for him to be alone. He was a black hole which sucked the life out of everyone and everything around him.

Sydar's white eyes bore heavily into Deimos. "Then you're aware of why this meeting is taking place."

Deimos knew, of course. It mainly involved him. The moment he felt a familiar chill roll through his body, he knew, and he was unsure of so many things at that moment.