Chapter 6: Interlude - The Headless Knight
Fresh snow began falling on the city ruins in which he'd taken shelter. Shin's platoon had been completely annihilated, and he'd fled here for cover. Hiding in an abandoned library, Shin sat with his back to the Juggernaut he'd piloted in the year since enlisting, its scarred surface carrying remnants of countless battles. Resigning himself to momentary slumber, he waited for dawn to break.
His small twelve-year-old body was somehow tolerating the night's chill. The library's walls had thankfully been spared from the cave-ins, and Shin sat in a windowless archive in the building's depths, wrapping himself with a thin blanket.
The Legion loitering about the ruins began retreating once their energy reserves started waning. Once dawn broke, he'd be able to return to base. Though he had a feeling that Fido, a Scavenger he'd become oddly attached to since his time in his old unit, might show up before then.
Suddenly, he felt as if someone had called him.
It was different from the voices of the ghosts he could hear ever since he'd died for the first time. It wasn't a sound but a feeling that someone was calling him. A voice he'd lost once before and thought he'd never hear again. What was it?
He went outside, as if drawn in by the call. The city, primarily decorated in the colors of cast iron and stone, was covered by a blanket of white and a haze of blurry shadows. The heavy snow fell harshly but silently, quietly submerging the town and the rubble, perhaps even the darkness of the night itself, with its white tyranny. The beauty of it threatened to bleach Shin's very soul.
Crossing the main street covered by debris and snow, he found himself in a plaza at the city's center. At the other edge of the plaza were two spires, one being the ruins of a tragically crumbled church. Hidden behind a veil of snow and darkness, a massive corpse lorded over the place solemnly.
The remains of a Juggernaut lay there, like a toppled skeleton. Its canopy was nowhere to be found, likely having been blown off much earlier. On its bent armor, crumpled and battered by wind and rain, he could still faintly make out the Personal Mark of a headless skeleton. Shin approached the machine, his legs sinking into the snow, and looked into the exposed cockpit.
"…Brother."
If he'd been asked how he knew it was him, the only answer Shin would have been able to provide was that he simply knew. He could confidently declare it as fact, independent of logic or reason. Resting in the cockpit, trapped where it would never speak again within the confines of that cramped white darkness with snow its only blanket, lay his brother's headless, skeletal corpse.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone