[RotDE] Chapter 1. Desperate Night and a Fragile Life. (Patreon)

A full silver moon shone in a clear night sky, powdering the word with a gentle brilliance. Like a guiding light, it shone her soft glow on the world, protecting all living beings from the fearful darkness that devoured the world at night.

However, some wished that tonight, the Moon hid. That way, they wouldn't have to witness the scene before them. They would have let the fearful darkness protect their sight, allowing them to ignore the ongoing nightmare before them.

In a luxurious estate, the normally polished and immaculate gate was blasted open. The two thick and tall metal doors were thrown on the ground, more than ten meters away from the entry, and bent like something punched them and broke them with brute strength.

After entering through the gate, a rock path adorned by bushes with different flowers on its sides led to a big and spacious building. Still, this path was now cracked as if a being with enormous weight had walked on it. The previously mentioned flowers were wilted and corrupted by a black-green miasma.

Dead guards with rotting bodies were littered on the sides. Their wounds were brutal; some of them had missing parts of the body, others were cleaved in half, and some had their head missing. However, all of them had that dreadful black-green aura eroding their bodies. It was clear that whoever broke the gates had overwhelmed the guards.

After this massacre, the previous vibrant and beautiful path had transformed. Now, it resembled a road that led the ones walking on it directly to the Underworld.

At the end of the broken path, the main doors to the biggest building had been toppled down in a similar way to the entrance gate.

Going further along the path of death, one reached the insides of this luxurious villa. The once immaculate and polished white marble walls were now filled with cracks, cuts, holes, and blood. More corpses lay around; some were female, some were male, some young, some old.

However, even if they were different, their ending had come the same way and on the same day.

Deeper into the mansion, approaching the backyard, sounds could be heard. They were a metallic cacophony created by the continuous clash of weapons.

"How!? How have you become so strong!?" A man lamented in an anguished voice. His tone was an amalgamation of negative feelings: grief, anguish, anger, regret, melancholy, and the most prominent one, despair.

"HAHAHA! Do you regret it!? Now it is too late! I'm going to kill every single one of you! Everything you have stained with your filthy existence will perish today! Then, I will add you to my army! Be glad to become my first Undead! HAHAHAHA!" The voice that answered the man came from a woman. You could hear her insanity in her voice. Moreover, her beautiful face was distorted in a wild smile, and her eyes were gaining a brilliant red glow as if they were being stained by the purest of bloods, looking more ominous by the second.

Behind the man, many women and children were looking at his fight. All of them had nervous faces as they looked at their pillar of confidence being overwhelmed by the woman. Worse, even if they wanted to help him, they were too weak to do anything against the powerful cultivator that had come to disrupt their peaceful life.

One child, the first daughter of the man, shouted. "You can do it, dad! Beat that bad woman!"

The man and woman fighting heard her. The man shouted, "Don't worry, little princess! Dad will win this fight!"

The crazed woman's smile became even wider, becoming almost face-splitting, and her eyes glowed enough to leave a red trail as she fought with him.

The man had a bad feeling, like something terrible was about to happen, but by the time he reacted, it was too late.

The woman kicked his stomach, sending him flying backward hundreds of meters and smashing through some of the mansion walls. He reacted extremely fast and shot back toward the woman quickly.

However, when he saw the direction the woman was running to, his heart sank with despair. "NOO!!"

The woman crazily laughed as she arrived before that child. Her speed was so high that only the man was able to react, but the kick that sent him flying made it impossible for him to reach in time.

Still, there was another person that reacted with pure instinct.

The mother of that child miraculously arrived before her daughter and put herself between the crazed woman and the child's way. "Please, stop this madness-!"

However, before she could call the crazed woman's name or end her pleas, under the despairing shout of the man and the screams from all the other women and children, the crazed woman's sword shone with a black-greenish light, piercing both mother and daughter, mercilessly and without any hesitation.

The little child only had time to look down on the sword lodged in her chest that impaled her across her mother before the ominous black-green energy made her body decay instantly and killed her painlessly, transforming her into dust.

The mother was much stronger than the child, so she didn't die instantly.

She was currently looking incredulously at the woman who had stabbed her and her child, the woman who previously was so close to all of them and had laughed, loved, cried, and supported them like a second pillar besides their husband.

As life left her body, a sobbing whisper escaped her mouth, looking with extreme anguish at the madness-filled eyes of the woman. "Why did it have to end like this…?"

Still, before she could say the woman's name, her life escaped her body, and she became a corpse, joining her daughter in the afterlife.

More than fifty years ago, a maid was walking through a meadow, carrying something between her arms.

The breeze was soft, the sky clear, and the grass danced softly beside her. However, wherever the maid walked, she stained the grass below her feet with blood droplets.

An infant not older than a day lay softly between her arms, snuggled in a cloth to keep it safe.

The maid's steps weren't firm as she was staggering. She was extremely weary as she felt her life leaving her body.

The maid knew that her wounds were too deep to survive more than an hour, but her steps didn't stop for a moment, trying to find a light at the end of this dark moment.

Thankfully, after ten more minutes of walking, the maid saw a town in the distance. Her voice was weak but had a happy tone, "Young miss, fate didn't forsake you… I'm going to find you a home soon."

The infant still had her eyes closed because she had just been born and was extremely tired. The maid looked at the little child and smiled weakly, "Thankfully, this maid could feed you something after you were born. The Lady would have been sad if you were to die out of hunger."

Thirty minutes later, the people guarding the entrance of the town spotted the bloody maid. They were at first wary, but when they spotted the infant between her arms, one of the guards rushed toward her while the other went to call the town doctor.

This town was very remote, so their community was quite small. Therefore, the guard didn't take long to find the doctor and explain the situation. While that guard went to find the doctor, the other one approached the maid hastily. "Miss, what happened?"

The maid was only holding on because of her determination to send her young miss to safety, so her answer was extremely faint almost inaudible, "Please, I can't hold on for much more, take care of the child…"

The guard supported the maid and carefully took the cloth that held the infant. "Hold on a little longer, miss. A doctor is coming and soon will take a-"

However, his words got stuck in his throat when he saw a literal hole that went through the stomach that was previously hidden by the infant. The maid smiled and said, "I can't be saved… Please take care of her. Her name is… Tatyana."

Then, after giving one last tender but worried look to the infant, she closed her eyes softly, and her body lost strength, quietly passing away.

As if sensing the death of the maid, the infant began crying. The guard was flustered about the whole situation, but he tried to calm her down. Not more than thirty seconds later, he saw the female doctor running over. He felt relief and hastily shouted, "Fast! She is already dying!"

The doctor was a middle-aged woman with a gentle disposition and facial features, but her running speed wasn't any lower than the guard beside her.

She looked at the infant and didn't see any bad signs besides weakness, so she redirected her attention toward the maid. However, after looking at her wounds, her face grimaced. Then, she said. "It is impossible to save her; her body is already devoid of blood, and only a legendary Earth-ranked treasure can save her… The fact that she reached here is already a miracle."

The infant's cries didn't stop, as if mourning her savior, the person who, together with other people, gave their life to send her to safety. The doctor asked the guard, "Did she say something before dying?"

The guard nodded and looked down at the crying infant, "She said to take care of her and that her name is Tatyana."

The doctor took the crying infant into her arms softly and carefully with a sad smile. "Fate has carried you here today. Since it is like that, I will raise you until you can spread your wings in this chaotic, dangerous, but equally beautiful world, Tatyana."

The infant slowly stopped crying and opened her eyes for the first time in her life; besides her dead savior, besides people that weren't related to her, wrapped safely in a cloth stained with blood and with an uncertain future before her.

But even in that situation, the unaware infant smiled innocently, looking at the woman that held her close to her bosom and the world around her curiously.

The woman was surprised to see a pair of piercing blood-red eyes looking around, an eye color that was extremely rare but beautiful nonetheless. She felt tender feelings grow in her heart and softly caressed the small child's cheek. "Let's go back to town; I have to prepare food for the little one. Also… Keep the maid's belongings safe; they may have something about little Tatyana's household and maybe some valuables that can be useful for her when she grows up."

The guards carried the dead maid and suddenly heard the woman's voice, but instead of the previous natural gentleness, it had an extremely cold tone, "If any person dares to try and steal anything that the maid carries, I will deal with them myself. So you better keep it safe."

The guards didn't dare disobey the only doctor in the town. Without saying anything, they continued walking behind the woman, but they knew that the person in front of them had seriously taken her role as the guardian of the baby.

In this remote town, no one dared go against her, so they knew that at least, after her turbulent first hours of life, the infant had found a home to grow safely.

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I can already tell your thoughts: What is this!? 

Well, going to the point. Like I promised, this novel is the prequel to Heaven, Earth, Me. Its name is [Heaven, Earth, Me: Rise of the Death Empress]. However, I must warn you about some things.

First, this novel, [Heaven, Earth, Me: Rise of the death Empress], is not a happy novel since we are going to follow Tatyana's adventure until she gives birth to Yasenia. There will be a lot of heartbreaks, so I would recommend reading with caution.

Second, here on Patreon, the release rate will be at least a chapter weekly after I find myself comfortable. However, don't worry about this novel affecting [Heaven, Earth, Me]. If I find that I'm having trouble uploading both, I will refocus on the main novel. Take this one as extra chapters I will release from time to time.

Third, advanced chapters for HEM:RDE? The same as those for HEM.

Sun cultivators will have up to six advanced chapters.

Moon cultivators will have up to eight advanced chapters. 

Star Cultivators will have up to ten advanced chapters. 

Finally, Celestial cultivators will have up to fifteen advanced chapters. 

I will release without a schedule at first until I reach the fifteenth chapter. I will try reaching chapter 15th by the end of this month, but I won't promise anything. I have enough of the novel written for that many chapters, the "only" thing left is editing, but it is very time-consuming. 

When the 15th chapter is released, I will give you another update! 

Finally, I hope you like the novel, and any questions you have, I will answer them below!