Crimson and Ashes

Some debts cannot be repaid. Some doors, once opened, cannot be closed. Shirakami Akane was eleven years old when he watched his parents die. In the moment after, with nothing left to lose, he made a trade, his humanity for a chance. Not to save them. The rules of what he bargained with were crueler than that. Only to walk a path toward something that may be impossible. He came back. His siblings were safe. The world had reset around a catastrophe no one remembered. But the boy who returned was not the boy who left. It is just an empty shell of what was familiar. And inside him, four things were waking up for the things that he can't name yet. This is the journey of the hollow and erudite, when the universe is already out of reach and falling for its inevitable, will you stop on your path?