Nothingness. A white landscape stretching as far as the eye can see.
“Everyone wants to stand out.”
The voice of Aster Gray is like a blanket, encompassing the scene as we see a slew of faceless men manifest from nothingness. Some large, some small, and all of them in uniform gray until one by one they each become emboldened in color that makes every last one pop.
“Every last man, alive or dead, does what they do because they need to feel like they’re the chosen one, the hero or villain of their own story.”
Vivid reds, blues, yellows, and even purples cover the bodies of the faceless masses, each one seemingly assigned a new color at random that covers their form. Slowly the men face one another, their once placid movements replaced with an undeniable tension.
“Arcadia begs its denizens to exist, to be different. But in those differences lies one unavoidable similarity. Mutual ground that every last Arcadian stands on in their attempt to be unlike one an other.”
Aster chuckles, his voice shaking the landscape.
“No matter how unique you feel, you all fight for the same thing.”
Without warning the tension breaks between the multi-colored swarm, all of the separate men swinging at one another, fists colliding with featureless faces, the colors of the many warriors splattering onto one another in a catastrophic rainbow cacophony.
“A constant battle to have the loudest voice, the strongest body, the brightest, most vivid personality. The colors of your personalities mix into one another as the war for dominance spreads across the whole of Deathrow, the whole of Arcadia.”
One of the faceless men gets decapitated by a blue blade, yellow blood shooting across its face, blood pooling in the middle of the once white battlefield. The very same blue assailant is soon turned to mulch as a red knife repeatedly impales it from behind, its own blood adding to the mess below turning it orange in turn.
“Only one can truly stand tall at the end of the day, though, can’t they? Your differences are palpable, truly one color, one vibrant human amongst you must be the victor!”
The hordes of men converge in the center of the white landscape, their blood staining it, mixing together as their strife causing the orange mess in the center to muddy, color after color mixing within in as the blood and gore becomes indiscernible of color. All we are left with is a big, gray pool.
“But in the end, no matter how vibrant you are, how different your approach to becoming a champion, you are all fated to die.”
The gray pool in the center swirls, a man rising from the center.
“All of you but me. As the colors run, the lines of life and death blur. It’s a paradox, you see.”
Aster Gray. The lifeless, the deathless, stands amidst the carnage coated in gray.
“Once everything mixes, once the colors run out, everything turns to gray.”