He took a deep breath, and closed his eyes. Every nerve, every cell in his body was calm despite the raging storm of chaos flying around him. Most who had a similar experience would call it divine clarity. He opened his eyes slowly, drinking in the meagre light offered from the dying star, obfuscated by the thick cloud of dust created by machines of war and unfettered pollution. 

The sporadic explosions a few feet away didn’t even register as he looked down at himself, covered in a thick, dark red liquid. There was an instant of confusion and morbid curiosity as he took stock of the situation. He realized first that there was a gaping wound in his right side, blood spilling out like an overfilled tub. In an attempt to investigate with his adjacent arm, something felt off. He realized that his entire left arm below the shoulder was lying a few feet away next to some rubble.

“I should go get that,” was the first thought that propelled action. Immediately he tripped over something. A few feet down the war torn road, a cloud parted allowing a small pillar of light to shine through. Stumbling, he turned to see what it was in the dim light, wishing the sun would hurry and shine on his exact location. 

What greeted him was a lake of blood and mana, separate from the pool that came from himself. It took a moment for his brain to register this, then he noticed the body it came from. A strong sense of familiarity slowly crept from his toes to his chest as he examined the mutilated corpse before him.

Most shocking was the small stump where he knew there should be a neck and head, a twisted and convoluted mass of metal, carbon, flesh, and bone. The head appeared to have been ripped off recently, as residual blood continuously leaked from exposed veins and arteries.

There was a trail of innards leading away from the body, some perfectly preserved as if pulled straight out of a textbook, some charred to a crisp and barely recognizable, and the rest completely destroyed and barely recognizable as organic matter. All seemed to be heading away from the point of their demise, as if perpetually and infinitely trying to outrun the death that claimed them.

In that instant, his wish came true as the sun finally meandered over to him. As he gained clarity, the light felt more like the burning gaze of being judged than the soothing aura of being warmed. A single, momentary glint of something shiny at the top of the corpse’s chest was all it took for him to forget about the lake of blood, the trail of organs, the dismembered limbs. As he realized what it illuminated, he was suddenly forced back into reality, and the full weight of the situation washed over him as the clouds once again closed and left him in darkness.

No words escaped his lips. No thoughts ran through his head. He shut out the familiar yet distant voice in his ears screaming at him, trying to make contact. He completely ignored the dozens of emergency warnings obscuring his natural field of view, created by his exoskeleton AI to inform him of the abysmal state of both his flesh and his suit. As a wave of cold, all consuming hatred washed over him, the only external indication of what was to come next was a faint, tired smile on his lips.

He knew, from this moment on, there was no turning back and it would be naïve to believe otherwise. And so he embraced the hatred, its consequences, and his inevitable end.

Responding to its host’s subconscious wishes, the armor morphed. Starting as a low buzz but quickly escalating to a loud shriek, the carbon, electricity, and nanomachines reorganized itself to resemble something vaguely similar to the owner’s original humanoid shape. Fractures were forcefully mended, gashes and and bruises closed and numbed, and where repairs and rebuilding was not immediately possible, organic matter was replaced with metal and machine. The detached nanomachines of his left arm returned to the main body in an effort to make recovery quicker and more efficient. Thicker areas of armor sacrificed protection to cover other areas with none. Pain receptors were numbed or simply not reconstructed, only used to be able to assess and repair the extent of damage, to continue along the inevitable path of calamity. The entire body was turned into a single huge nerve. Signals were sent from one area of the body to the brain and back orders of magnitude more quickly, often skipping the conscious recognition entirely in favor of speed. The system easily understood that any damage would be immediately repaired, and thus rerouted all available resources to maximizing violence and survival. From the outside looking in, there are two clear exceptions to this rule; his eyes glowed a vibrant green which were discernible even through the thick smog, and two horns reminiscent of ancient oriental demons grew from his forehead. The eyes allowed clearer vision in the dust. It was important to be able to discern prey over long distances, behind rubble, and through smoke. The horns allowed him to sense minute changes in the air around him and provide important milliseconds for his body to react. It would be a gross understatement to say that this being, far past humanity, was optimized for bloodshed.

Over the deafening roar of warfare, there was a single inhuman cry that echoed from every end of the city that served as the only warning. Exactly four seconds later, an electromagnetic pulse swept the entire combat theatre like a nuke, and everything went dead silent. He crouched on all fours, every sense primed and tuned to find the nearest enemy.

The poor soldier was frozen by the scene in front of him, too transfixed by the beautiful emerald glow of the eyes and light turquoise glow of electric signals too powerful to be contained internally to even think to move. His brain was too awestruck witnessing the birth of a deity to register the instant he was leapt on and viscerally torn limb from limb.

Ryoshi snapped to his senses, completely confused by the scene he just witnessed. He knew that was him, but how could it be when the dreamlike scene that flashed before him was of someone much older? He looked down at both hands, intact and pure, not yet dismembered or stained with blood. Who was that who died? Why was Ryo himself there? How could he prevent the inevitable anguish? As he asked himself that, he knew. It was an unavoidable premonition, a glimpse into the catalyst for something beyond himself. Just as he could not prevent the sun from dying, he could not prevent this future.

“Ryo!”

As quickly as he heard his name, he forgot everything that just transpired, unaware of how deeply that moment would stick with him.