Shattered Ladder 1-0
Prologue: End of Beginning
The world split down the middle; a roar of a sound from the gaping maw of a beast the size of the heavens as the sky tore open.
Clouds peeled apart, gentle white and blue shifting into a deep black and angrier red.
From the wound above, a boy stepped out on empty air, eyes lit with the color of blood and dark skin covered with so much more of it. Bare chest scarred and beaten, light bent around him as the army of white-robed monks filling the street below froze mid-stride, robes snapping in the wind of his arrival.
A dozen dozen eyes turned his way, as readiness cracked apart to confusion; focus to fear.
A serpent the color of bruises coiled across the boy’s shoulders, fangs bared toward the crowd below as its head slid out from between blood-spattered dreadlocks.
On the shattered steps in front of the army, a girl with hair the color of gold held a bleeding boy in her arms, his red hair spilling on her shoulders. Wind whipped strands of blonde across her face as she stared up like so many others. “…Ken?”
He hovered above them, smoke curling from his skin, as five fingers formed a fist.
“Your fight’s with me.”
The world inhaled.
And it roared with him.