"This is the best outcome hahaha! It serves that bastard Eclipse, right?"

  Eclipse immediately recognised this voice. It was Nite, one of the Village Leader's sons

  "Well, of course. Just don't mention this to anyone else because we'll be going against the old man’s wishes. He promised the Dracoferus Tribe that no one in the village would find out they came to dispose of that old man." Lern smiled.

  "Ahahaha, don't worry, brother." Nite laughed

  Eclipse didn't make a noise, his crouching figure as still as ever. However, his fingernails had dug deep into his palms, and his eyes had a very disturbing shade of darkness.

  Lern continued to talk, "With Eclipse being the scapegoat, not only would people not be suspicious, but we also get rid of that bastard! Gah! He pissed me off so much!"

  "Kyayayaya! I know right-"

  Suddenly, he stopped talking and looked straight past Lern.

  "What's wrong?" he asked. He turned around, and behind him was a lonesome boy of around eleven. His grey hair completely concealed his eyes in the dark, and rivulets of water ran down his soaked body. The wind tore past him in its sorrowful rage, blowing several beads of precipitation off him. Thunder rolled deafeningly overhead, accompanied by a sudden flash of lightning. The momentary blinding light illuminated a faint purple glow in the boy's bloodshot eyes, roiling with hellbent fury.

  Lern's expression went from caution to astonishment, then to humour. "Oh, speak of the devil. It's Eclipse! What's wrong? You look quite furious there."

  Nite smirked, "I don't recall taking any toys from him."

  Eclipse didn't say anything. He kept glaring at them, the veins in his neck throbbing with bloodlust.

  Nite waited for some time to hear his reply, "Hey, are you gonna just stand there or should I come there to beat your ass for what you did to me a few weeks ago?"

  "You bastards… I'll… kill…you! Argh!!" Just as Eclipse had said this, pain flared through his body, causing him to suddenly stagnate, and then he dropped to his knees. Subsequently, he spat out a mouthful of blood, which had a tinge of green mixed in.

  Eclipse was unaware that what caused this was the poison from the Emberclaw.

  Seeing this, Nite burst into hysterical laughter, "Dude, that is disgusting! Just what did you have for breakfast this morning?"

  He stopped to catch his breath, then a provoking arc drew across his face, "Anyway, though, how does it feel to kill your own grandfather? You murderer?!"

  Eclipse eyes suddenly shot open, blood suddenly replacing the tears which were flowing through them. It wasn't clear if this was due to grief or the Emberclaw's poison.

  Veins all over his body shook in wrath. Saliva drooled down his mouth like that of a hungry predator. It was both a grief-inducing and a horrifying sight. Insanity replaced his rationality as his nails dug into the earth underneath him. He savagely tried to get up but immediately fell back on his knees, coughing out another mouthful of poison-infested blood.

  Unbeknownst to him, at this moment, a peculiar energy stirred within his core.

  "…stop … STOP IT! I'M GOING TO KILL YOU IF YOU SAY ANOTHER WORD!" Eclipse shouted.

  Lern raised his eyebrows, "Hm? That's not a very nice thing to say."

  As he thought of more lines to provoke Eclipse, a sense of unease washed over him. The atmosphere had suddenly grown… dark. Not that it wasn't dark before, but now, it was as if black mist had surrounded them. Lern also grew cautious and looked around.

  Nite and Lern went back to back against each other.

  "Brother... what's going on?" Nite asked nervously.

  Unbeknownst to them, a pure black aura resonated from Eclipse's core and slowly started engulfing his entire being. It bubbled within his body as bloodlust overflowed inside him. He had long surrendered to despair, and his human morals had fallen into a ceaseless abyss - one he might never be able to get out of.

  As the aura thickened, the cherry-blossom bandage the girl had wrapped around his arm loosened, and individual cherry blossoms from the outer layers fell off one by one, whilst the cherry blossoms in the inner layers charred to black ash. Beneath it, the deep wound left by the Emberclaw twitched and writhed, then the torn flesh began to close itself back together. The burn mark he got from cauterising himself, too, faded slowly.

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  In his world, nothing existed other than pure hatred and blinding rage. With a newborn animalistic desire to destroy everything, Eclipse slowly stood up, his body still slouching down.

  "Wha… What is going on? Where is all this black mist coming from?" Nite stuttered.

  Lern smiled uneasily, "Bad weather much-?"

  Lern's voice cracked, and his pupils shrank soundlessly, filled with horror, as he noticed a child's figure slowly walking towards them. Nite also stared at Eclipse in disbelief, subconsciously taking a step back.

  He walked towards them, his face completely devoid of any expression.

  But what frightened them was his eyes. Its entirety had turned pitch black. As he walked, the air around them rippled with a strange black aura, which was now visibly effusing from Eclipse's body. Each step he took was completely devoid of any sound, but left deep cracks in the earth. The cuts he had received from getting assaulted with rocks visibly sizzled and closed up.

  When he was a couple of metres away from them, he stopped, then started right into their eyes and let out an incomparably menacing smile. In that instant, fear became tangible as Nite and Lern felt their stomachs turn in dread. What seemed like a normal smile to an average person, to them, was akin to a devil's omen.

  Finally, Nite swallowed and got his act together, "What… What the hell? You think something like this can scare me-"

  "Shut up, you idiot!" Lern rebuked then pulled him back. He then pulled out a switch knife from his pocket, "This bastard caught us off guard in our last fight, but now I'm prepared. On the off-chance I get disadvantaged, you back me!"

  Nite clenched his fists, then stepped back.

  Lern readied his fighting stance and gritted his teeth, and held back for a moment, overcoming his fear. Then he thrust out his weapon and charged. At the same time, Eclipse plunged towards him, a geyser of aura erupting behind him.

  Eclipse clawed straight at Lern, and he intercepted Eclipse's hand with his knife, with the intent to cut through it, but to his astonishment and dismay, it didn't penetrate him in the slightest. In fact, his own hand became numb due to the impact.

  Lern's pupils contracted all of a sudden. Not because he was unable to cut Eclipse, but when he looked down at his knife, the part which had contacted Eclipse had disintegrated like paper burning to ash! His knife was made from solid iron, yet it had fallen apart just like that.

  There was no way he could win.

  He immediately pulled away, and just as he was about to turn around to flee, his body turned stiff, and his face grew extremely pale as if it was completely deprived of blood. He robotically moved his head down, and the sight made his spirit crumble.

  There was a large hole in his abdomen.

  The darkness seeped outward from the intruding hand, spreading through his flesh in branching, spider-web cracks. Wherever this peculiar darkness touched, muscle shrivelled, organs burned away into black rot, and bone crumbled like ash. Within seconds, everything it claimed disintegrated into drifting, blackened dust.

  "Ah.. ah… ah…" Nite looked at the sight in front of him in disbelief and unconsciously took a step back.

  Lern continued to look in terror as he saw a large chunk of ash, which had been his intestine, fall to the floor in a sickening sound. Seeing this, his will to live completely diminished, replaced by the desire for a quicker death.

  "Kill me…" he muttered helplessly. The strange aura was like some lethal virus; every time it burned one of his organs to ash, it immediately moved to the next organ. And it was deliberately leaving the vital organs to last.

  He completely dropped to his knees and then plopped to the floor. Tears and mucus came flowing out of his eyes. Soon, even the tears turned into black fluid, whereupon his eyes were engulfed by black before disintegrating into ash.

  "How does it feel?" Eclipse spoke, his voice raspy and hoarse.

  He stood over Lern's body, his face not containing the slightest ripple of empathy. A rustle resounded in his senses, and he immediately took his gaze to Nite, who was trying to run away pathetically while tripping and stumbling in his path. Seeing him trying to get away, Eclipse's heart once again flew ablaze as he clenched his fists and zoomed towards the man, black aura spiralling uncontrollably from him. The vegetation and trees in the vicinity of several hundred metres had been completely charred black and were starting to fall apart.

  Eclipse easily caught up to him, whereupon he grabbed Nite's head and crushed his face against the hard earth. He cringed in pain as his perception shook. Fear and regret had reached their apex in his heart, but the adrenaline had long ceased. He kept wailing and struggling while crying out miserably as Eclipse straddled him, "Please don't kill me! I'll give you money or anything you wish. Please spare my life! I'm begging-"

  Before he could finish, Eclipse landed an exceedingly powerful, meteoric blow on his face. As soon as the punch landed, the impact caused the ground underneath his head to shatter, as blood and bits of gore flew out of his face. Eclipse then landed another blow, which was even more ferocious and precise than the last. The first one caused his jaw and skull to shatter, but this punch completely disfigured him, leaving a large hole in his face.

  By the time the third punch landed, his face had completely broken apart. Eclipse then pummelled him with punch after punch, which were even more powerful than the last.

  He kept raining down blows after blows in an attempt to squash the raging emotions in his heart, even a little, but it was useless.

  After an unknown period of time, he finally got up. Looking down at the headless body and the thick mashed-up paste of blood and bones above it, an unnoticeable arc drew across his face, and he left.

  He walked past a large pile of disintegrated black matter, which had once been the aloof Lern, and towards the village.

  When he reached what remained of his house, he paused and clenched his fists. Not a single person remained. In fact, they hadn't even bothered to cover his grandfather's body, let alone bury him.

  Sorrow and unbending rage grew in his heart as he trudged towards the village centre.