Akashic Chronicles: Paradise Lost

"Attachments are unneeded"

It was both the first and last thing my old man told me. To be an effective killer you must not feel for the enemy.

To be an effective mercenary you must not feel remorse. A contract is a contract. The Client is god for us. To us the value of money is more important than ideals. Hope won't feed you.

Sometimes those very same ideals could poison your entire being. Possess you into something more than what you aimed to be. Embrace nothingness, Coin is God.

That was the mantra of every mercenary.

That was what I believed for so long, until I met her. She pulled me out of that murky swamp. Shining an inexhaustible light, creating a solid path we could tread on to. She was the reason I could keep on moving forwards. The only reason I gave a damn about anything.

However, soon enough, like all roads, it soon crumbled into rubble, nothing but relics of bygone memories remained. Plunging me back down deeper into that black and murky waters once more. I reveled in it. I let it consume me, become the very thing we swore to destroy. The very same thing my old man told me about. A monster borne from the hypocrisy of those ideals, yet desperately clinging onto it like a mad man.

This is the tale of a fool who once known love, oh so beautiful yet poisonous it consumed him. A tale of a fool who yearns for redemption yet revels in his own self hatred. A monstrosity borne not from necessity, but from anguish.