I lost my dreams in this disaster
Kayn — Male — Snowbound — Warrior — Difficult
The lupine looked out across the snow, mind alive with many thoughts racing through his head. Kayn had begun settling into his new home, this Snowbound as it were, but he couldn't shake the worries that eternally plagued his mind. Something could go wrong at any moment. He didn't know these people. Neither did Raine or Ecto, to his knowledge. It was all entirely new and that came with the dangers of the unknown that he'd seen far too deeply within. Information was a very powerful thing that could give you absolute control over another or drive an individual to unending reaches of insanity. Often he'd heard the expression 'sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can't hurt me', but the Eurasian Wolf knew that to be one of the biggest lies ever to fall upon his sensitive ears. Words had more power than any tooth, claw, or bolt of lightning ever could. Concepts were an immortal thing that held immense usefulness for those that could rally others behind the cause. That's all a clan really was, wasn't it? A charismatic individual bending the will of others to suit their needs, but slyly making it seem as if it was a boon. It wasn't. Far from it even. Kayn had first hand experienced the cruelty of those that led the lives of clanners since the very moment he'd been born into the world. It was an unforgiving existence that cared not for him or those he cared about. But then, in those days, who had he truly cared about?
Well, his family of course. They meant everything to him in he days of his youth. Not Raine and Ectoplasmicjoy who he'd come to know more recently and be taken in by. No, his true family. The ones who shared the very same blood that coursed strongly throughout every vein in his body, heart eagerly pumping out the necessary liquid of life as he gazed upon the blinding white landscape. Almost as if summoned from his thoughts, the scent of blood wafted through the air on the frigid winds. It brought with it memories that Kayn had been trying to suppress, but slowly a snarl began to rumble from his chest. Painful reminiscences of the past rushed through him, the once slightly repressed memories relapsing to the forefront of his mind like it did ever time he began to panic. In his early days, weeks, and months as a pup he'd been subjected to countless hardships. One clan attacked them. Then the next. And then another would eventually come. The constant threat of others had been heavily ingrained into his mind from countless hours spent shivering in fear. Remembering how it felt to be scared was a weird feeling indeed for the Snowbounder. As he slowly got older though he realized he would have to be the one to step up to defend his siblings, especially in the absence of his father who he now knew was fraternizing with vile criminals at the time instead of protecting the children he'd brought into the world. Kayn had been forced to grow up far too earlier for such a young pup. The alternative was death, to him, his family, and maybe even the rest of his clan should he have faltered. Perhaps they'd have even been subjected to worse. In those times the clans had been rife with creatures more than willing to take advantage of the young and naive in ways that sickened the lupine. It still did even in the present day mindset of the wolf. They were all deserving of death. It was a realization that he'd come to finally when the weight of the world crushed his shoulders beneath the immeasurable responsibility such a young pup had been relegated to dealing with alone. Where one might have looked hoping to see the innocence of a child would instead stand the jaded expression of one would go on to commit countless atrocities. It all started with a young pup who merely wished to defend the things he cared about from the ruthless monsters that vied mercilessly to rip the things he held dear to his once pure heart. But alas, all good things must come to an end. That was a truth Kayn knew all too well.
Eventually, deep within the temple he'd grown up within, the darkness in his heart had silently called out to a creature far more shrouded in hatred than any of the filthy clanners he'd vowed to rend the throats of. Did he regret taking the plunge into the depths of his home that day? Kayn still wasn't entirely sure if it had turned out to be worth all the pain in hindsight. Unknowingly he had ventured further into the depths of his home, exploring areas he could have sworn he'd already been through a thousand times. Despite that near absolute assurance, there was a new corridor that he had never seen before. It was unexplored by anyone in the clan, dust within the halls showing the likely hundreds of years it had gone untouched. Even at such a young age he had been a brave soldier for his clan, like he would eventually be for his new home. Without hesitation he pressed further in, not entirely sure of what he was hoping to find. Eventually the torches of the temple no longer lit the dark corridor, but still he persevered. Minutes turned into hours, and hours turned into what felt like days. Yet he hungered for nothing and his perseverance never wavered. Finally he reached the end of the corridor, the path splitting into two more. In an ancient language which he shouldn't have been able to read, one over each path, read 'Loyalty' and 'Power'. As Kayn recalled that memory he couldn't help but feel responsible for all of the bad in his life. It was his choice, driven by greed and hatred, that had brought the world down upon him. That was the moment when Kayn solidified the corruption that had fostered in his heart over the months of his youth. Not a moment after he read both had he decided to choose the path offering power. It opened into a former throne room with the skeleton of a human child wearing a jagged bone crown. Despite the endless amounts of wealth in the room, the crown called to the wolf. It hummed with energy and sang a siren song to his young mind. Kayn stole the crown from the long dead human and put it on, claiming the power for himself. Searing pain tore into his thoughts and caused him to black out. Of course the naive pup had decided to take some sort of ancient artifact for himself. He likely would have done it again if given the choice today. When he awoke later, it was at the entrance to the undiscovered corridor, except nothing was there. The wolf checked over and over, but it was nothing more than a wall. Except the crown was on his head still, devoid of the power it held seemingly moments before. And then he heard a rumbling laugh of a great beast echoing in the back of his thoughts, ripping through his mind with force that brought the pup to his knees. It was a feeling that, even when remembering it, made him shiver. Not from the sting of the snow, but from the uncomfortable chill up his spine from that eerie laugh.
It was on that day he'd released Fenrir, the wolf destined to eat the gods. Their souls had bound to one another for what Kayn had thought would be eternity. The demon wormed it's way through every ounce of his being without consent, absorbing who he was and spitting out a corrupt facsimile of the once noble pup. His soul had once been pure like the beautiful white powder that coated his new home, but it had been twisted by the ancient monstrosity. Kayn had already been a jaded emotional mess from the rough fight for his life since the day he'd been born, however Fenrir brought with it depths of darkness the lupine hadn't thought possible. The things the creature had done... The things it wanted to do still... The things it made him want to do... It had all been too much for Kayn to handle alone. The wolf could feel himself slipping closer to the sheer drop of insanity. His mind swirled with alien thoughts that didn't belong to him, emotions that disgusted him, and knowledge that made him shiver from the vastness of reality. It was not meant for him to see. It was the unknown that no mortal, or even immortal, should have ever been given the chance to look into. Kayn had glanced beyond the fog of obscurity and what he saw broke him. What he learned shattered the young pup. This was why the human child must have died so young with the crown still upon its' head. Unlike the human though, Kayn refused to falter even after the glimpse into infinity. The wolf would not fall to the demon. He had a family to protect. He couldn't allow himself to fail, simply because failure of any kind had long since ceased to be an option if the things he cared about would continue to exist. Instead of falling prey to the black tendrils of insanity, he embraced it. He felt Fenrir within him finally with nary a barrier between the two. God, he had never felt as good as that moment. The sheer power he felt flowing through him made every fiber of his being flare with life. He wanted more. No, needed more. Even as he grimaced looking out upon the drifts of snow, especially with the scent of blood in his nostrils, he still wanted more.
Armed with the powers granted to him by Fenrir and a twisted no state of mind, the young pup had decided to scour every inch of his territory for something like the demon. Kayn had practically become obsessed with the search for such an unrealistic experience, to feel the rush of a new entity joining with his own. Eventually though, he found a scythe at the bottom of a deep ravine. It called out to him and frantically he searched until he unearthed the blade of millennia. It was forged from wicked black metal and a bright red eye locked on him. Within his mind another voice spoke, but it was not the chaotic howling of Fenrir. Will you prove worthy? Those words still echoed in his head. Had he proven worthy? Kayn supposed that was a matter of perspective. Without a moment of hesitation he picked up the scythe which he would later find out to be named Rhaast. Once again he dropped his barrier to a demon, only this time it was of his own free will. The vastness of this other creature was entirely different than that of the god devourer, but the familiar rush was just as addicting. This entity was far more intelligent in it's mannerisms however, unlike the bestial nature of the first demon he'd bound with. It explained to him, having scoured his mind, that his soul was wavering and wouldn't be capable of handling a third demon melded with it. Instead though, it offered him the alternative choice of consuming the souls of mortals. Kayn gladly accepted the proposal. Perhaps that was what truly made him insane in the end.
The wolf's paws clenched in the snow, the soft white frozen liquid making a satisfying crunch like that of bones would snapped. It still bothered him that he had agreed to commit those atrocities. He'd only managed to become addicted to the feeling of absorbing souls, and none of it had mattered in the end. Despite every ounce of power he held within him after the two demonic entities and the countless souls he'd ripped from the victims of anyone unfortunate enough to cross his path, not a goddamn moment of it had mattered. An enemy clan had struck while he was out satisfying his darker desires, and he'd arrived back home to watch his territory burn down. Fire still made him uncomfortable even after the many months since it happened. All Kayn could do was simply watch in horror as everything he had ever known burned to the ground. As clan members tried to flee they were picked off one by one the realization that his siblings might suffer the same cruelty materialized in his thoughts. Unfortunately though fate was a cruel mistress to the black lupine, as it had been since the regretful day of his birth. Several of his siblings had fallen prey to the fires, but what came next tore the last vestiges of innocence from him. Kayn watched as his parents defended his sister from attackers, the last remaining sibling of his and the smallest of the litter. They turned to look at him at the familiar scent of their son, but that was when the invaders took their opportunity. Kayn watched from afar, helpless to stop the slaughter of his parents. The moment the light of life left their eyes shattered his heart. It was the brutal gutting of his sister after though that finally broke him. Replaying the scene in his mind almost as vividly as they day it had happened, eyes staring blankly into the distance, broke him again. The night of his family's death had been a blank spot in his memory, but when he awoke he'd been drenched in blood. And he'd loved it.
The midnight lupine stood to his paws, the scent of blood mixing with his memory to awaken something dark within him. Kayn had finally managed to purge the demons from his soul and absorb their powers a few months ago, but the presence they left upon him had scarred his mind forever. The wolf could still hear them as loudly as when he was a pup. They whispered dark lies and sang beautiful lyrics of enticement to the black lupine. Kayn shut his eyes and started shaking his head in defiance, but their voices wouldn't stop. And that feeling. That fucking feeling. Oh that familiar hunger was rising from deep within him. He'd tried to start a new chapter in his life with his new family, devoid of the darkness he'd always known his entire life, but Kayn was a broken vessel for monsters. Only instead of remaining that, he'd simply become the monster. He understood that the demons in his soul hadn't been the cause of all the things he'd done because he still wanted to do them. The taste of crimson blood coating his throat was divine, and the feeling of ripping a soul from another sentient creature was pure ecstasy; even the drugs he'd done growing up in a clan of gangsters couldn't compare to the rush he felt when denying another being the right to live. Kayn hated that he had become the same as the vile individuals he'd despised as a pup. He hated himself. But god did he love the feeling. Before he knew it he had already sank low to the ground, stalking in the direction of the blood that had been upon his sensitive nose for the last couple of minutes. As the memories had surged forth so had the old Kayn, a prowling demon ready to devour anything that was unfortunate enough to have a beating heart. Try as he might to resist it, the hunger had already gripped his mind. The emotions sprinting through his mind were too much for him to handle so the wolf had simply given into the desires, wishing to wash away the pain by embracing his darkness once again. Fenrir was no longer with him, but that didn't mean the whispers in his head were wrong about him. Kayn was the definition of a monster. The wolf was almost in a full sprint towards the source of the scent when he realized he'd accidentally begun looking into the spiritual realm in an effort to hunt for souls. In the distance Kayn noticed an orb, dark blue sphere that visually sparked with energy. As he got closer though, he realized it wasn't an orb at all. More accurately, it wasn't a whole one. It looked as if the individuals soul had quite literally been severed in some way, the jagged slice not looking like the natural shape of an aura that he was used to. The edges of the sphere also had a certain jaggedness to them, but it seemed less intentional than the large chunk that appeared to be missing from the creature's soul. It was a splintered, broken mess and yet.... It looked delicious.
The scene he came across wasn't at all what he expected to find however. The scent of blood led him away from the individual whose aura he had picked up on, instead falling upon the corpse of two individuals. The first he spotted was a wolf like him, not quite as large, but by no means a small creature. A male it looked like. The other was a feline of some sort, but as for the kind he wasn't sure. The now deceased female shared his fur color, however Kayn would make sure that was the only similarity between them. It had only taken the black lupine a moment to analyze the battlefield before finding his gaze landing upon a familiar sight. Killua, the feline who had been there when he arrived in Snowbound. Looking upon the male, despite his age, sent the fur on his spine on end. There was something about the apprentice that made him wary. The lack of a scent. The lack of sound when he moved. And now he knew that Killua was the owner of the fractured aura he had seen from afar. The two individuals next to the boy were dead though and that meant Kayn's bloodlust filled gaze had fallen upon the other Snowbounder. His soul looked irresistable. The black lupine found himself slowly walking closer, one slow step inf front of another. Kayn's head lowered into the stance of a stalking predator. He was about to surge forth when his dual-colored gaze spotted the injuries upon Killua. The wolf shook his head for a moment, doing everything in his power to ignore the two voices sowing lies into his mind. Killua was an ally. The lupine repeated that in his thoughts loudly for a few moments before releasing a heavy sigh. He wasn't a killer, not anymore. The demon-touched warrior refused to give in to the shadows that had gripped his heart for so long. That certainly didn't stop every fiber of his being from screaming to rip Killua apart, but he held back despite how tempting it would be to simply indulge himself for the first time since he'd purged the shadows from his soul. Clearly not his heart however. "Killua? Are you okay? What exactly happened here?" the lupine called out tentatively to the other male, voice shaking with uncertainty, but it was not with fear. Not of Killua or the individuals he'd been fighting at least. No, the fear was of himself and the monster that had been awoken at merely the scent of blood and the sight of a pretty aura.
![[Image: NEnq7Wr.png?1]](https://i.imgur.com/NEnq7Wr.png?1)