There were bloodstains on your hands.

No matter what there would always be bloodstains on your hands. It was something that no amount of scrubbing could get rid of.

You would always be dirty, never clean. Your eyes that watched and did nothing; your hands that betrayed you and killed; your mind for not realizing sooner what you’d lose; your heart for not finding mercy until it was too late.

You were tainted. Not whole. Broken.

Your race was tainted. Not whole. Broken.

Not that anyone could see. Not that they wanted to see, even if they could. One of your greatest fears is that they will never see.

The adults raised in a world so cruel, can only become what they were crafted to be. Ruthless, cruel, and deadly.

The young, you fear, are following the same path, so careless with lives and clueless to the value they possess. To kill for protection of oneself or another was something you found just out of necessity, but they found mindless slaughter a necessity.

A war-minded race, your kind has always killed. Not just others, but yourselves. You send out battleships under direct order of the empress and slaughter millions. The highbloods of high military ranking send in the lowbloods of low military ranking like pawns, without any regard or care. Only as faceless, nameless, worthless.

All of their hands were so tainted with blood. The highbloods and empress killed and couldn’t care. What did it matter to them if one hundred more died in a battle?

But it mattered to the slaughtered lowbloods.

And it mattered to you.

As a commander, you would send others to their death, but if you could just prevent the deaths of an extra one or two, it would make any extra blood on your hands worth it.

Your added pain would be your penance in a place where bloodstained hands had become commonplace.