It was a cold late evening and our boy Renji was playing a hardcore MMA multiplayer game that made him sweat even in the freezing cold wind that blowed past the open windows of his small yet cozy and warming apartment room.
Just as usual he was following with his daily routine, waking up late in the morning, getting lectures from college professors who scolded him for being reckless, coming home in the evening and going for a sweaty soccer match and crushing his opponents like ants on a footpath. And in the late evening grabbing his console and beating the hell out of his enemies in some hardcore multiplayer game, while waiting for his mother, yes, the only woman in his life he ever loved and cared of.
Renji is a very strong, energetic, charming, handsome, smart, and fitness addict, in short, a freaking sexy lad, the sort of - I'll steal your girlfriend by just an eye contact kind of.
He's a little bit of careless, always looking for fun with his fellow dudes. For some unknown reasons, he doesn't like girls or women at all, even when cute petite girls scream and cheer like crazy when he scores a goal, or corporate hotties turning their heads when he passes by, and even when the damn sexy maid of their town cafe winks everytime she serves him.
Renji's past wasn't so normal like his present was, his father died in a very mysterious way that his mother refuses to unveil, and it was not until the time when he was twelve, he found out a pendant from his father's locked up drawer, and just as he was looking at it, analyzing it, his mother came out of nowwhere, and snatched it from him, warning him to not touch anything there. He was old yet he knew something wasn't right. His mother would sometime speak in a language with herself that seemed cryptic to him, yet he chose to stay quiet just because he loved his mother, Aiko Tsukihara.
Aiko Tsukihara, a single mother who raised Renji on her own after her husband disappeared under mysterious circumstances when Renji was just a toddler. Despite the burden of working long shifts at the hospital and dealing with the harsh realities of life, Aiko never let her struggles show in front of her son. She was known among her colleagues as a calm and skilled professional, always the first to volunteer for difficult tasks and night shifts.
At home, she was Renji's entire world — his comfort, his protector, and his only real family. She taught him compassion and humility, often telling him, "You don't have to be strong all the time. Just strong enough when it matters."
Though kind-hearted, Aiko was not naive. She had long suspected that something dark was watching over her family — old whispers from her husband's side, and moments of déjà vu that made her blood run cold. But she kept these fears to herself, hoping to shield Renji from the past that was clawing its way back. But now that past was going to devour him alive.
The blue glow of the television flickered across Renji's face as he mashed the buttons on his controller, locked in a heated match of MMA Remastered. The clock on the wall blinked 11:53 PM. Rain tapped against the windows like impatient fingers, and thunder growled in the distance. It was too late, and he was starting to get worried, but he knew his mother was a nurse and she'd still be coming, walking tired from a long operation.
Just a few minutes later, he barely noticed the front doorbell ring. Ding-dong. His mother was supposed to return from her shift at the hospital around now.
Still gripping the controller, he yelled out, "Mom?" No response. Ding-dong. The bell echoed again, longer this time. More... impatient.
He paused the game and stood, the silence in the room suddenly pressing down like a weight on his shoulders. Barefoot, he walked to the door and pulled it open. There she stood. His mother.
Still in her nurse's uniform, soaked from the rain. But something was wrong — her eyes were wide, lips trembling, and before Renji could ask what was happening, her body jerked violently forward. A choked gasp escaped her lips. Blood sprayed across the threshold.
Time slowed.
His mother fell to her knees, eyes locked on his — terror frozen in them like a last scream that never came. Her throat was slit. Deep. Jagged. And another wound — a vicious stab to the gut — gushed crimson as she collapsed forward, arms reaching out... for him.
"Mom—!"
He caught her before she hit the floor, but her body was already cold, too cold. Lifeless. His hands trembled, soaked in her blood. Tears welled up in his eyes as his breath hitched, chest tightening like a vice. Then... he felt them. He looked up.
At the far end of the corridor, two figures stood — tall, motionless, wrapped in black veils that danced lightly despite the stillness. No faces, no eyes. Just shadows cloaked in the shape of men. They didn't move. They only watched. A strange chill spread across Renji's spine, cold and electric.
The taller figure slowly tilted its head. The shorter one raised a bloodied dagger — the metal gleamed even in the dim corridor light.
Renji's mouth opened to scream, but no sound came from his throat.
Something inside Renji broke — not the fragile kind of break that left you weeping, but the violent, feral kind that screamed from the soul. As he clutched his mother's lifeless body, something ancient stirred deep within him, coiling in his chest like a serpent of flame and darkness. His vision blurred, veins throbbing with molten heat, and suddenly — the corridor was no longer just a corridor. The walls pulsed, the air thickened, and a black haze crept in from the edges of reality like a living thing.
His breath came out in ragged snarls, teeth bared. Claws — actual claws — tore through the skin of his hands. His pupils slit like a predator's, glowing with a violent crimson light. The scream that tore out of him wasn't human. It was primal. Agonized. Otherworldly. And then he lunged.
A blur of bloodlust and broken sanity, Renji hurled himself down the hallway toward the two cloaked figures. The world cracked beneath each step, floor tiles exploding into shards. He didn't feel human anymore — didn't care. He wanted to rip, to tear, to make them bleed like they made his heart bleed. But just as his claws reached inches from the taller figure's veil—the world shattered.
A great, gaping maw of darkness split open beneath him, dragging him down mid-lunge. Black tendrils burst from the void, wrapping around his limbs, his torso, his screaming face. The last thing he saw before he was swallowed whole was his mothers brutally murdered body, which seemed to be reaching out to him, and the two figures standing still, untouched, silent... as if waiting.
The Exile had claimed him. No. It chose him for a purpose far greater than he could have imagined, his power so primal, so twisted, that it would shatter the very imbalance of the Land of Void Sanctuary and those supremes, who threaten the purity and balance of the Exile.