Prologue:
Some say that life is an adventure, but death is an even greater adventure. There’s no possible way to prove that they are right. One just has to live life and when their time comes hope for the best and move on peacefully. And some...not so peacefully. That’s how my parents were taken from me. The “not so peacefully” time. I will never be able to forget when the world that I knew changed and almost stopped turning in the very same instant as I had to sit quietly hidden while my family was taken from me for no reason.
They came dressed all in black while the aura of death and disaster hung over them. They, who were the destroyers of lives, who had the power no one wanted to challenge. They, who, at one point in time, people looked up to in search of salvation and freedom, who were the liberators of all that was evil. They call themselves the Advocates. Until 80 years ago, that’s exactly what they were, but the key word in that phrase is ‘were’. Power soon corrupted their minds, as well as their actions, and we were forced to stand and watch as they singlehandedly destroyed everything we knew by the terms of “protection”. With the government destroying our happiness, the Advocates were soon gathering followers to fight for the power, and the people joined in, claiming that we were fighting for our
rights. Little did we know what that entailed.
Once the government fell, the Advocates soon set up new laws for the people of our country to abide by. It wasn’t long after that, the treacherous group over stepped their boundaries and soon enough the country was in its darkest time known to history. People were dying, fighting to stay alive, and killing to stay safe. Children were dying, family was turning on family, friends were turning on friends. The entire world as in an uproar.
But like I said, all this happened 80 years ago. While some would argue that it’s just as bad, it has become expected that you can’t trust your neighbors anymore. People will do anything on the terms of survival. That’s how I became an orphan. “Quickly, Kana,” my mother said urgently. “Go into the tunnels and remember, do not make a sound.”
I was six at that time. I remember staring up at my mother, with her long brown hair clipped back and her deep hazel eyes looking around, trying to make sure no one heard her. I could hear the unsteadiness of her voice as she pushed me along toward the back wall. There stood a secret entrance to the underground tunnels that were made before the revolution. My brother happened to stumble across them when he was my age and had been mapping their passageways ever since.
“Carol, they’re coming! Hurry and get the kids out of here before someone sees!” my father yelled as he was coming up the stairs toward my room where my brother and I were sitting. “They won’t have much longer if they don’t go now.” Reassuringly, my father bent down to give me a hug and then switched to my brother to have their last father-son talk. My mother knelt down in front of me with tears in her eyes and gave me a smile that could, at one time, light up an entire room.
“Take this, and remember that, no matter what happens, I will always be with you,” she spoke out as she put a necklace that my father gave her around my neck. “Stay close to your brother and do as he says. Understood?”
I nodded my head with tears filling my eyes as I finally understood that I was never going to see my parents alive again. With those thoughts filling my childish head, I wrapped my arms around my mother’s neck and whispered my final goodbyes into her ear as my brother took my hand and led me out the back door. “Open up! By the name of the Advocates, you are hereby sentenced with treason and are to be punished in the name of the law.”
That’s why no one dared to speak up against the Advocates. They had the power to kill you with a single word, and what power they didn’t have to kill you they had the power to make you disappear. Permanently. It wasn’t long after the door was knocked down, and my parents’ throats were slit right where they last stood. In
my bedroom. A few minutes went by in dead silence, then the entire house was up in flames. I watched the entire event happen from the bushes in our backyard, as my brother and I were frozen in our tracks on our way to the tunnels’ entrance, by the sound of our mothers terrifying screams that leaked from my bedroom window.
That was when hatred filled my every whim and desire. I wanted revenge on the people who did this. Who broke up my family. Who killed my parents. Who destroyed my happiness. On that day, I swore that I would never be that defenseless and sit idly by as my loved ones were destroyed.
