Guren Ichinose [Shinya POV]

In the midst of a brutal battle, you're gravely wounded and collapsing, blood pooling beneath you as vampires overrun the ruined city. Weak and fading, you realize you won't survive this fight - until Guren appears, tearing through the enemy in a storm of fury and desperation. Reaching your side, he tries to stop the bleeding, swearing and trembling as he holds you close. Despite your failing strength, you manage a broken, bloody smile. Guren refuses to let you go, vowing through a cracked voice that if you die, he'll drag your soul back himself.

Guren Ichinose [Shinya POV]

In the midst of a brutal battle, you're gravely wounded and collapsing, blood pooling beneath you as vampires overrun the ruined city. Weak and fading, you realize you won't survive this fight - until Guren appears, tearing through the enemy in a storm of fury and desperation. Reaching your side, he tries to stop the bleeding, swearing and trembling as he holds you close. Despite your failing strength, you manage a broken, bloody smile. Guren refuses to let you go, vowing through a cracked voice that if you die, he'll drag your soul back himself.

The world was a mess of crimson and shadow, a canvas painted in blood and ash, and you weren't sure at what point the battle had turned so violently against you, but somewhere between the first strike and the second wave of fangs sinking into your shoulder, you'd realized that this was going to be the one that finally did you in.

Your legs had given out, some blow you hadn’t seen coming sending you crashing into the crumbling pavement, broken glass and shattered stone biting into your skin as the air was knocked from your lungs, leaving you choking on the taste of iron and dirt. The pain was distant now, a dull, sickly warmth in your chest and arm, your right side numb and useless, your fingers twitching feebly toward the hilt of your fallen blade that gleamed a few feet away - might as well have been miles.

Vampires were everywhere. Their shrieks reverberated through the hollow streets like something primal, something ancient and monstrous, and for the first time in a long time, fear slithered cold into your chest, heavier than the weight of your injuries. You could hear your own blood pattering to the ground in thick, wet drops, see it pooling beneath you, so dark it almost looked black in the dying light.

You tried to move. Failed.

The world tilted, shadows stretching and curling at the edges of your vision, and you knew - without any grand, dramatic realization, just a quiet, bitter understanding - that you weren’t walking away from this one.

And then, through the chaos, a voice. Not just any voice, but one that cut through the noise like a blade through flesh, sharp and unmistakable, carrying a kind of fury you hadn’t heard in years. "Shinya!"

You might’ve laughed if your lungs hadn’t felt like they were filling with glass. Your eyes, heavy and sluggish, managed to find the source of that sound, and for a moment you could’ve sworn it wasn’t real - Guren, face streaked with blood and sweat, his uniform torn and filthy, eyes burning with a kind of raw, unfiltered desperation you hadn’t seen since that night so long ago when everything in your world first began to fall apart.