The Path of Madness

Chapter 1: Life

Elric felt adrift in the dark. No gunshots, explosions, or haunting gunshots. It's just dark and quiet. When his eyes finally opened, he felt surprised. He was no longer on a deadly battlefield. Instead, he was in a room that he never seemed to see before. The smell of damp and musty adorns the air. This was not the deadly battlefield he had always known, but a place far from familiar.

Elric woke up in indescribable confusion. It felt like two streams of conflicting memories were raging inside his head. As darkness and moonlight filled his surroundings, he felt an unfamiliar feeling, a part of him being someone who had fought through the battlefield, he said, with dangers and threats at all times and in part as a young man living in peace, and just seeing the world, this sensation was so strange to him. Elric felt a feeling of confusion so deep that he almost felt as if he had been trapped in an endless nightmare. His mind floated between his war-filled memories and the memories of others, creating an agonizing feeling of conflict. Like a flash of memory, he saw a child sound asleep in his bed, with a woman singing it. The sound of a young woman's small laughter echoed in her ears while playing with him, reminding Elric of a childhood he never had.But then, the memories turned dark. Elric felt the tension he had experienced when he fought on the battlefield. He saw the explosion of fire, heard the clinking of bullets, and felt the pain of injuries he had never felt before.It was like he was trapped in two conflicting worlds. A person's memories hit him like an unexpected wave, reminding him of the identity he had lost, while he still had to try to keep his own memories. The conflict within her deepened as she tried to understand and separate between the two personalities in these so different memories.

With a conflicted feeling, Elric examined his now-changing body. It's impossible, he thought.

He who was once a muscular and powerful warrior, had now turned into an alien youth with an ordinary-looking body. Every movement he tried to make with his new body felt like walking on water. He tried to raise his hand, and his fingers trembled, as if he had never used it before.

He squeezed the rough skin of his body, trying to look for signs of scars from knives or bullets, signs that this was part of a forgotten memory. But nothing, just smooth skin that is not familiar with war. He also felt weakness in his body, an inability to stand up and move at will.

Elric tried to look around him, trying to understand what was happening. The room felt very foreign to him, despite the vague sense of familiarity in his mind. He knew this room was not his. His normally sturdy and hard bed now appeared much smaller and softer, illuminated by the moonlight coming in from the window, with darkness filling the room. It seemed to reflect his new state.

With a trembling body, he looked at the mirror hanging on the wall he was looking at. The image reflected there was a young man with messy black hair with matching eye colors. But it's not his face.

His face was always adorned by the scars of battle and decisiveness that accompanied the life of the battlefield. His expression that had always been firm and sharp, now seemed to turn blank and pale the face of someone who had fallen when he was about to face death. As if a dead prisoner.

Elric tried to say something, but words that were usually easy to hear became difficult, not even sounding out of his lips.

Anxiety and Horror struck him, but in the midst of the confusion, he remembered a language very different from all the languages he had ever known. This foreign language appears as a weak whisper but can be spoken with difficulty, with one word adorning his mind: “apa” in an unknown language.

Elric tried to pronounce some words in the language he knew from his memory. However, each experiment produced only vague and frustrated sounds. This adds to his frustration. He was still confused and felt very uncomfortable with the new changes he was experiencing.

Elric's mind began to more deeply compose two conflicting streams of memory. He began to understand a few things. Like that he was someone who was not from this world, he was someone who should have died. After his death he ended up in the body of an unknown person. It's like some of the novels he's read. He realized how absurd this was. How a dead person goes to another world and lives in peace. He does not believe in religion or God. And if there really was, he was sure that the place was just hell.

He was so disgusted by his own guess, if one wanted to save the world why one had to do so because they were sent to another world. And if they really need to, if the world is on the verge of collapse shouldn't they be looking for someone stronger. Why would someone send an ordinary human without cheat and other powers to save the world. It is not more logical to choose races in mythology such as dragons and giants or demons.

He couldn't determine what caused him to end up here. He tried to get rid of his thoughts first, this could not be stopped just a mere guess. He decided to look at his new condition first.

Elric carefully stood up, feeling an unusual physical discomfort all over his body, especially his neck. He was a little confused, he looked - look at the room that now looked different to him. Simple unadorned table with only a few items on it such as a clock, bookshelf with a few books in it, old wooden chairs and cabinets, faded floors, and so on, a small open window and a simple mirror hung on the wall. He looked at the glass once again after the confusion subsided. The mirror did not reflect the shadow of the extraordinary past, it merely reflected the image of a thin, pale and weak young man with a rope wrapped around his neck as if he had just received death in his life, which he didn't realize when he first saw the mirror. His face was a little horrified when he saw it. He tried to calm down again.

He had a lot to think about, yet he continued to stare in the mirror, trying to find traces of himself within the eyes of the young man reflecting back a hollow look. Her panic deepens as she feels herself trapped in someone else's body. He became silent.

He tried to untie the rope that had tangled his neck while sorting out the memories from his memory fragments. The owner of this body is named Aldric, he died by suicide, that's all he remembers. The reason for his death why he killed himself did not exist, as if it was missing.

He began to compile memories with a heart. As Elric goes through Aldric's memories, he finds pieces that interest him, memories of his brother and aunt, the only ones of the Aldric family.

He pondered on how things were, like the fact that he was in Aldric's body because of his strange death. How he lives from now on. What caused him to move to Aldric's body. Who sent him here. A sense of uncertainty and a sense of alienation enveloped his mind, and he felt puzzled as to what was done to answer his question.

Elric began to investigate every corner of this unfamiliar room. After he decided that the most important thing was to pretend to be Aldric completely. He needed to know more directly than just recall something from an unfamiliar Aldric memory.

He started to open the desk drawer, where Aldric was keeping something. It contained a diary, a liotin on top of it and several other items. After a long time he took the pendant, It was an ordinary liotin with a black and white photo containing a photo of two people.

It's a picture of a dead aldric parent. He just watched in silence. After being silent for so long he began to slowly step with trembling steps towards where the light coming from the window was. There, he stood still, staring out through the window at the strange eight-numbered full moon in the empty night sky. Standing with her body staggered for a while, she realized once again that this was not just a dream.