5Prologue
Home again
"Hell began with a dead tree, a shattered dimension, a tower that broke the sky, and four corpses. Of course the people of Remnant would only find out about this when the situation was too dire but it was a shocking revelation nonetheless.
There was no one to save them. No help was coming for no help could come. Remnant was alone in a sea of utter darkness" - The Watcher
The battle scarred muscular body of a tall man laid on the polished granite. His once short cut burned dark orange hair was lying strewn across the black polished stone in dirty long locks. A cracked and dented breastplate which was emblazoned with a faded bird that had spread it's wide wings rested atop his slowly rising and falling chest.
The man laid splaid out on the on the ground as blood trickled down his head from a cut on his forehead onto the cold stone.
His breathing was full and strong, and his eyes were full of vigor despite his exhaustion.
Lying all around him were the corpses of monsters who had fallen to the power of the strong swings of his mace. A gryphon lay with crushed bones and a shattered head in front of a massive black stone door that it had been guarding.
Several ogres with dark blue muscular bodies and nothing but shoddy cracked armor on their chests and lower bodies lay headless on the ground. What remained of their heads was long spraying trails of blood and brain matter across the stone.
Ten hellhounds the size of small trucks lay broken and burning in their death all across the stone floor.
After letting out a long heavy breath, the man slowly got up with the clanking of his plate armor and looked at the door looming in front of him.
The images of his comrades that he had lost flashed through his mind.
His friend Dove. He had started out as his lackey. A cruel but cowardly bully, but after the apocalypse he had began to change.
After the deaths of the two other friends of his, he had realized that this was no longer a game, that the bullying and mind games were no longer going to get him anywhere. Thus he dedicated himself to trying to help Cardin in any way he could.
Fighting monsters and clearing the tower became his highest priority.
The cocky arrogance that once plastered his face was replaced by a subdued but firm resolve to beat this trial and follow his leader to the end, whatever end it may be.
Sadly, Dove met his end pushing an exhausted Nora who had been bitten by a gargantuan venomous snake boss out of the way of an invisible poisonous fog trap at the midpoint of a dungeon on floor two hundred and sixty four.
Aura was in no way a surefire protection from the tower, as the higher they climbed, there were monsters, weapons, and even traps that could drain your soul, bypass it entirely, or effect the mind through control and illusions.
Next was a friend he had respected from the beginning. Ironwood. The man had done his best in gathering the remnants of humanity and faunus to the safe zone megacity that surrounded the base of the massive heaven reaching tower.
He had held humanity together in the chaos and confusion, and organized raid teams on the tower. Even going so far as to organize rescue teams to go out to the dangerous wastelands that the rest of the world had become.
Ironwood met his end at the hands of an assassination plot by a group of extremists that were worried he might actually clear the tower.
After all, with the tower came new technology, new power sources, new miraculous items, and even magical power. Even a useless person who had no power could gain power and fame in the tower if they tried hard enough.
The logical conclusion was that if the tower was cleared, there was a possibility that it might all go away. Many humans and faunus who held resentment and hate in their hearts saw the tower as a way to get back at those they hated.
Racial tension was at an all time high, and even the hastily set up government couldn't stop it.
The White Fang had gained even more power, and human resistance groups rose up to challenge the faunus supremacists in bloody warfare.
With the powers of magic and the miraculous items from the tower, killing enemies from afar was that much easier.
Next was an unlikely ally Lie Ren. The two had become closer after multiple life or death raids in the tower. Despite how they originally were, after seeing how both of them had changed over the years, the two became almost brothers in arms of a sort.
Then came his closest friend, Jaune Arc. The two had been by each other and fought together for years.
The two had founded a mercenary corporation to clear the tower and had stayed together through thick and thin. Jaune had grown bulky and stern. After twenty nine years in the tower he had almost forgotten how to smile.
Besides the time he spent with his wife and when he cleared a raid, Jaune's face was in a permanent flat line. He had grown his blonde hair out and had stubble that stubbornly refused to be shaven and always grew back out.
His blue eyes had darkened over the years in the tower and he had almost fallen to depression several times.
However, with the support of his wife Pyrrha and Cardin's steadfast resolution, Jaune kept going. He kept climbing. He kept fighting.
However, reality is a vicious mistress and Jaune met his end not to a boss or in some fight, but to a biological weapon that had been deployed by a rival mercenary company that had deployed a magical lethal disease in the dungeon he had decided to raid with them.
Lastly and most devastating was the death of his wife Iris. A young atlesian woman who he had met on the seventh floor of the tower and quickly fell in love. She had supported Cardin with love and her soothing presence.
When he was young and brash, she was the one that would calm him. She was the one who would cook his dinner when he got home. She was the one who would hold him in her arms when he lost a comrade, when he lost another friend.
When she died, he had seriously considered contemplating suicide. Yet instead he took that shadow, that darkness inside him and let it temper him. It refined him and sharpened him to a fine blade.
He spent two years destroying any and every monster in his path.
Yet that shadow on his heart never completely left. It stayed with him, in the recesses of his heart, and in the back of his mind.
In the end, when he and a raid team of six hundred of the best Huntsmen and women attempted to push through to the seven hundredth floor only he remained.
That was where he was right now. Standing in front of the six hundred and ninety ninth floors boss room. He was met with the crushing despair of failure. There might be a time again in the future when Humanity and faunuskind would push further but it would not be this day or the next.
No, perhaps the children born in the tower would push further, but would they have that hatred. That desire. The drive to clear it?
Cardin's shoulders slouched. He had lost. Still, he must go further. No matter what.
If he was to die, he wouldn't go out helplessly
Stepping up to the massive thirty meter doors of blackness with gold depictions of humans kneeling in front of a giant demon that seemed to be cackling maniacly underneath a golden clock, Cardin scowled.
These demons were the bane of humanity, even moreso than Grimm and monsters. They were cruel, vicious, and most of all intelligent beyond measure. They worked for the tower, but they did so in mysterious almost seditious ways. It was almost as if they were plotting against the tower as well.
Swallowing the disgusting dirty feelings that the door had brought up in him, Cardin pushed in the doors.
They swung slowly open at his push, revealing a pitch black room that was illuminated by a single thin pinpoint of light shining down from the ceiling onto a golden staff with a clock atop it that slowly ticked with monotonous clicks.
Sniffing the air for any gasses or strange smells, it only smelled like cold stone. Taking out a flashlight from a pouch on his waist, Cardin shined it across the room. Sure enough, there was a door on the far end of an unknown black metal. The walls were black and there was nothing but the staff in the room.
Shining the flashlight on the floor to make sure that there were no traps or pitfalls, it seemed the floor was sturdy.
Stepping forward in a ready stance, Cardin entered the room, mace ready to crush anything it hit. Yet nothing jumped out at him. The floor didn't fall out from under his feet in a dastardly trap.
The room was as it seemed to be. Walking around the staff, he made his way to the door in the back and shined the flashlight on it. The flashlight was an item that not only gave light, it also revealed runes and traps that it shined upon.
The door had several runes hidden on it. Two for if it was struck or stabbed in which it would send out a powerful flashing explosion and shoot out several dozen blades coated in six different poisons a second after.
The other two runes were reinforcement and reflection runes which would defend it and reflect any attack up to a certain degree of force. A nasty trap for anyone who tried to brute force their way through without thinking.
Cardin wasn't a magician, nor did he know how to pick locks and disarm runes, so he turned back to the staff with a heavy heart.
It was clearly a trigger to something, and pulling it out could lead to disaster, but what other options did he have? The monsters were defeated, but he had been poisoned and cursed. He wouldn't make it back to the safe zone on this floor before he was done in.
With every second that passed he felt that he was slowly getting weaker.
Walking up to the staff, there was a plaque underneath it in some bronze like metal.
It read as such.
"The choice to turn back time or move forward is yours, but it will only be for a single time. There will not be another chance"
Simple and to the point, but at what cost?
Cardin ruminated for a moment, but he had little time left.
Gritting his teeth, he gripped the staff and poured his will, his energy, and his desire to make things right into the golden rod.
Then with a prismatic flash, everything went white.
Author Note: This is a cardin redemption fic. If Neo and Emerald can be redeemed than Cardin who did far less bad than them can and will be redeemed too.