The beginning of the chaos

Ares woke up the other day at an unusual time. The sun didn't show itself yet. Out there was dark. However, the boy felt two times as energetic as on the other days and was not afraid of the absence of light like he usually was.

He commonly wouldwake up when the sun raised and pointed to his window. The sun rays would make him open his eyes instantly and go change himself to the morning jog he always did. At that point, his body did all these things automatically.

"Force yourself to do something every day during one month, then your body will get used to it and start to do it alone." That was what his father always said to him when he was trying to get a new good habit. It never was as easy as he make it seem, but worked.

'It's been quite a while since I started with this routine. Since the day I wanted to learn about swordsmanship and become stronger...' He started to remember the reason why he wanted so badly to learn about it.

Besides trying to prepare himself to become a Beast Hunter, the young boy always thought that someday he could end up like that Hunter that appeared in their village. If he didn't know how to defend himself even a bit when the time came, the possibility to survive would be zero.

"Listen, the time always comes when you can't run away, but only fight till the end. For this, you need to be prepared.' That was other advice that his father said when he asked him to learn about how to wield a sword.

The boy changed himself, brushed his teeth and washed his face as fast as he could.

He passed by the living room, where his father usually slept. The man was breathing soundly and in a rhythm that showed that he was in a heavy sleep. As always, his axe was laying on the ground beside him.

'I wonder if he will let he wield it one day. He always says to me that I can't now, though. Why is this thing so special for him?'

The battle-axe had just one edge. Ares had seen some double-edged battle axes before, and he personally found those to be cooler than his father's. The blade of that weapon was probably made of iron and silver plated.

'There are some runes written on it, which makes me wonder if it has some kind of special power. I counted three, but he never leaves me take a look at it for enough time to identify more.'

Since he was very confident about his Awakening, and that his element would be awesome, Ares didn't care much about runes, but he knew the basics.

Letting that mysterious battle axe aside, he went out and started to jog. It was cold out there, but he didn't care. Ares had a strange resistance to cold environments and rarely got flu in his life.

"I think I will train hard today to stress out a bit." He muttered.

As he jogged, he started to remember the dream he had about his mother. Dreams were the only way he could find to remember her face or the few memories he had about her. They seemed to be always... blurry, somehow.

Unfortunately, he didn't have too many moments with his mother to remember. According to his counts, he had less than 5 different dreams that kept repeating themselves through time.

The one he had that day was the most usual, and probably the last memory he had from the time he passed beside his mother.

'She looked at me over her shoulder, then at my grandpa, and my father. Her gaze stopped on me for more time. She had the same auburn hair like me, but her face was completely blurry. She said something for them, both having serious faces. Then, she opened the door and walked off as a strong pale light coming from the outside world blinded me.'

The succession of events sometimes came scrambled on his dreams. But, connecting the parts, the narrative was always the same.

As he remembered his dreams and how amazing his mom seemed to be, the anger on his heart seemed to grow stronger.

'She might have been a Beast Hunter as well and they didn't tell me about it until now. I am sure about it. There is no way that she would die so suddenly for an Ancient, after all. Those things seem to not get out of their domains nowadays, so she must have had entered their territory and got killed.'

As he reasoned about it, he already had finished his jogging and started his workout. He was doing his last repetition of push-ups.

'Ok, now, some exercises on the fixed bar, to train my back properly. My father advised me before to grow my shoulders and back, so I could improve the speed of my swings. I think it would be good to better the speed of my waist rotation as well.'

His father taught him how to develop the different muscle groups and how each one of them worked. It was helpful when trying to improve his physical prowess.

'Ok, let's do this and then start to practice some forms with the sword.'

...

The last drop of sweat run down his face until it dropped from his chin. The boy was fixed in a position with his legs flexed and firmly holding his body in the same place. His weight was shifted on one leg, with the other stretched completely. His arms were firm, slowly making a movement with the sword.

The villagers who passed there always looked to Ares with dumbfounded eyes. It was difficult to see a boy of his age do something like that with such focus every single day.

While the other kids played together and talked about silly things on the well of the village, or hanged out with their friends on the farms, he would train with the sword all morning and then help his father.

Some saw it as pure discipline, others as craziness. Either way, nobody could deny that it was amazing to see someone as young having this much determination.

Ares finished his forms. It had been just one hour and a half since the sunrise. Roughly three hours and a half since he was training. His body was sweating all over and he was exhausted.

Even though it was still early in the morning, the atmosphere seemed strangely... Hot.

'The sun itself isn't so hot. But the atmosphere seems to have a dense wave of heat. That's strange. We are at the start of the autumn after all, so it wasn't supposed to be so hot in the morning.' Ares looked to the sun. It was so weak at that time that he didn't even need to squint his eyes to stare at it for some seconds.

He was finding it strange. And that wasn't the only strange thing happening that day. His father was half an hour late for their morning training. He never was late in these 2 years that they started to train together.

Ares was going to avoid his eyes from the sky, but he saw something moving in the distance. At first, he thought that it could be his imagination.

'Is this my tired mind playing with me? If I can see something flying at that distance, then it must be something big. There isn't a bird that passes by here that is so big.'

The youth squinted his eyes, positioning his hands above them and trying to focus his attention more on the figure far away from there.

'It's coming too fast! How it can be? What the hell is wrong with this bird?' He had an incredulous expression on his face.

The bird kept coming at a high speed. Soon, the sound of his wings flapping could be heard. Lastly, a roar echoed like a rumble of thunder. It wasn't the sound which a normal bird would do, but something more terrifying that made Ares shiver as a chill ran down his spine and his heartbeat went crazy.

"It can't be..." he muttered, widening his eyes and letting his jaw drop. "Ancient!" As he came to this conclusion, another roar echoed, and this time all the villagers could hear it.

"Ancient!" Ares shouted again, turning to the people standing around him. As they realized the literal meaning of the boy's words, they started to run away in panic.

Ares ran as well, taking his sword with him. However, he was too exhausted because of his train and couldn't use all his speed.

It took him a lot of effort to cover the first kilometer towards his house. He was still in the edgy parts of the village, which were the places where he would usually train alone.

'Is it too near already?' He turned to confirm how long that beast would take to arrive there... and his body froze once reality hit him on the face.

The firebird descended from the sky at a crazy speed that didn't match its huge body at all. It landed right in front of Ares, the ground trembled and made the boy stumble a few steps before falling on his butt.

His horrified eyes met with the beast's eyes.

'I... I will die.'