"The damage is infectious, and all that can be done is purge it all and start from scratch."
If life is a series of choices, then perhaps that just means that life is a game? To Akazawa Saki, that's all life really is. She refutes the existence of G...
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What turned out to be an exceedingly large ward house was painfully lack-luster to the rest of the world outside. Empty rooms, dark corridors without windows, and the stale, almost stagnate odor of old water hung in the air, making exploration rather unpleasant at best.
But for Saki, she had amused herself with less, before.
She wandered along old stone corridors, careful to not set foot outside, as her father had requested, careful not to disturb any further residents within the building. Her bright gaze traced the walls, taking in every indent and fissure that marked the walls. Her fingers grazed along the grooves between slabs in the walls, and her doeskin wrapped feet tapped against the floor dully. It was much like she was the only person in the world at that moment, and it was disorientating.
The faint sound of voices echoed on the stale air as Saki reached a dark corridor towards the back of the empty building, drawing her gaze away from the blemishes of time-worn stone.
There were many voices, so many that it formed a distant, disorientating hum that hung on the air, like the rushing of crashing water. It drew Saki's curiosity, enough so that she detoured from her third lap of the building to wander down into the dark corridor that seemed to descend underground.
Marches of footsteps soon mixed in with the growing chorus of voices, blending and churning like a discordant symphony of unease. They reverberated through the silence in harrowing waves, smothering her thoughts from her grasp with the growing volume. They were as oppressive as they were deafening, crashing into each other with such violence that Saki could not hope to discern one word from the next.
At least until she found a lone ray of light filtering in through a hole in the wall, illuminating a small halo of light spanning from the space where the ceiling and the wall connect. Beneath it through the faint glow of the light, Saki could see a stack of old wooden barrels against the wall beneath the opening and a series of small crates adorned with various old cushions of varying colours and shades.
The voices were almost deafening here, their words a chaotic cacophony against Saki's ears. And yet, her curiosity brought Saki to carefully climb up onto the highest barrel and peer up through what she soon realized was an old storm grate affixed with both old iron bars and damaged by water-worn trails.
The scene outside was not what Saki had expected to see as she leaned up on the balls of her feet to level her eyes with the bottom of the opening.
A great sea of feet were what the girl immediately noticed, clad in leather sippers and woolen socks, and the once-been vibrant clothes of the people were dulled down to varying shades of soot and dust. The light outside was bright, with the pristine blues peeking through between the masses of people filling what was one of the main streets bordering a large, central marketplace.
However, the booming sound of a voice on the air, more pristine and clear than the rest was the one sign that this was not a typical market day.
'These people as you call them, they aren't of our morals! Our beliefs!' The voice boomed over the masses, silencing them for just a brief second. 'Our people suffer at their hands for their misdeeds! It is our duty to correct the wrong and bring them back to the enlightened road!'
