A Future Shaped By The Past

"Loid." The name slipped from his lips before he could think. It wasn't a choice—his body obeyed, as if the man's question were law.

The strange man stood still, unmoving, yet it felt like he had always been there. Watching. Waiting. The forest, moments ago a chaos of destruction and screams, had gone silent—as if it had always been. The earth curved subtly toward him. The trees bent in quiet reverence. The wind whispered through the leaves like a breeze drawn only to him.

Reality itself seemed shaped to his presence.

Loid stared, breath shallow, awe tightening around his chest. For the first time since he had awoken in this twisted world, his instincts—once howling in panic—were quiet. Calmed. As if the very presence of the man before him wrapped the world in stillness.

The man's eyes lingered on him, unblinking. Loid could feel it—not just a gaze, but a piercing dissection. As though the man saw straight through skin and soul, mapping every weakness in his body, every fracture in his spirit.

Then, without a word, the man turned.

And walked.

Loid followed. Not out of choice. His body moved on its own, drawn forward like a shadow chasing light. 

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The forest remained still. Only the breeze dared move—soft, reverent, weaving through the trees like it feared disturbing the silence left in the man's wake.

Loid's bare feet pressed into the damp earth, crunching dead leaves with each uncertain step. His toes sank into the soil, grounding him in a world that felt like it found glee in his suffering. He stumbled more than once, not from clumsiness, but from staring—mesmerized by the figure ahead.

The man's back remained straight. Unmoving. His legs moved with a fluid grace that wasn't learned, but inherent—like motion itself bowed to him. The ground flattened beneath each step he took, yielding to his presence as if terrified to cause him even the slightest inconvenience.

It was as though the world was watching, waiting for his next command.

After what felt like hours the man stopped, Loid looked around, they were in a clearing.

Surrounded by trees like ancient sentinels, their bone like branches twisting, branching out into the sky trying to make the sky bleed. At the center laid a boulder, this was no mere rock—it was a monument of ancient stone rising higher than the highest buildings. 

Loid gazed at it, mouth agape.

"Run."

Loid looked at the man as he turned around—those ancient eyes boring into him.

"Run around this clearing." 

And so Loid did, not because he wanted to but because he needed too. Every word the strange man spoke Loid's body followed, like an unbroken law that shall never cease to be. Everything seemed to bend to him, to follow his very being.

Loid feet sank into the soft grass, sweat and dew dripping from his ankles as he ran, one foot after the other, each step heavier than the last. He gasped for air as he ran barely making it to the halfway point before his lungs began to burn his legs threatening give out beneath him.

He crumbled to the ground but stood up with shaking limbs, His vision blurred at the edges, stars creeping into his sight like distant memories. But still—he ran. not from compulsion but from necessity. Loid felt like puking, his mind beginning to blur, yet he ran his body not wanting to fall while under the presence of the strange man.

That gaze—a gaze that stripped away everything he was. It dug past muscle and sinew, through bone and soul, into something deeper. Something older. Loid could feel it now, just beneath the pain and exhaustion—a trembling chord in his chest, straining like a bowstring pulled taut across eons.

It was like his body remembered something his mind could not.

Then—

"Enough."

One word. Carved into the air like scripture.

Loid dropped to the ground, not from command, but from the sheer release of it.

 His chest rose and fell as he breathed in as much air as he could. He coughed, saliva and blood mixing on his lips from. His hands pressed into the dirt—cool, ancient. Loid mind and body felt numb; Darkness slowly closed in around his eyes like a pack of hungry wolves waiting to devour him whole, approaching in a slow and methodically until it fully consumed him.

The world slipped away. No sound. No pain. No thought.

Just void.

Yet somewhere, in that nothingness, Loid felt it a warmth—not comforting, but ancient. Terrifying. Like something buried in the marrow of time had turned its attention to him. It did not speak. It resonated.

Thrum.

The sound pulsed through him, not through his ears, but his bones.

Thrum.

It echoed through the blood in his veins, through the cracks in his soul.

He saw glimpses. Not memories. Not dreams.

Wars that split the sky. Cities floating on reversed oceans. A sun that screamed as it was torn from the heavens.

And at the center of it all—humans. Not as they were, but as they had been. Titans of force wrapped in flesh. Beings who walked among concepts and made them kneel.

Loid's body floated in that void, naked and unarmed, yet something vast coiled within his chest like a beast awakening.

And then—he remembered.

The monster.

That thing in the woods.

Its body was a mockery of man—elongated limbs bent the wrong way, skin stretched tight over muscle, its mouth split too wide with a mouth that swallowed light. And it screamed—not with a voice, but with rage, hunger, and joy all at once.

He had run from it, stumbling over roots and stone, the sound of its limbs crashing behind him like branches snapping under a storm. That unending scream chasing him into the dark, echoing through his chest like it had always been there. He remembered the terror. The helplessness. The shame.

And that memory alone was enough to send a ripple through the void.

"You were not made to be prey, something whispered"—not aloud, but inside him, it was silent and calm, like it was stating a fact. An extreme sense of pride brewed in him after hearing that, as if reminded of how great he was.

The voice spoke once more—

"kill them.... kill them.... KILL THEM ALL."— It wasn't loud yet it came with such conviction that the very void stilled. something in him stirred he drifted through the void of nothingness—another shift occurred deep in his bones.

HATE. Hatred burst forth like a wave of unending size from within him. A hatred so vast, so inconceivable, it threatened to kill him—even as his mind floated in the vast nothingness. It did not simply burn it consumed. It tore through every part of him, from the pulse of his heart to the smallest particles that made up his being. It surged deeper still, drowning his very soul in a sea of madness and loathing, until there was nothing left untouched—only hate.

Then—darkness shattered.

He awoke with a gasp, body twitching violently, like he'd just clawed his way out of a all consuming abyss.

The forest was still.

The man stood where he had before, arms crossed, watching with that same unreadable expression.

"You heard it," he said.

Not a question. A statement.

Loid could only nod—trembling as the feeling began to dissipate.

The man nodded, he turned and began walking, slow and steady.

----------------------------------------------A/N---------------------------------------------

I posting double chapter today since i didn't post on Wednesday.

Sorry. :(