The transition from heaven to hell didn't happen gradually. It didn't offer a warning. It didn't knock on the door. It simply kicked it in.
BOOM.
The sound didn't just wake me; it rattled my bones. It felt like the earth itself had cracked open directly beneath the foundation of the cottage.
I jolted upright in bed, my heart slamming against my ribs like a trapped bird, frantic and bruising. The air in my room, usually cool and still, was vibrating. The darkness felt heavy, suffocating, pressing in against my eyes. For a split second, my sleepy brain tried to rationalize it. Thunder? A late-season storm rolling off the northern peaks?
Then came the screaming.
It wasn't a singular scream; it was a dual siren wail from across the hall. Sora and Iris. Their cries pierced the silence of the night, terrified, shrill, and primal. It was the sound of pure biological panic.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Heavy footsteps pounded down the hallway, shaking the floorboards, followed by the frantic, hushed murmuring of my parents.
"What the hell was that?" I whispered, my voice sounding foreign to my own ears.
I threw the heavy quilt off, the cold air hitting my sweat-dampened skin. I scrambled out of bed, my bare feet hitting the floor, and rushed to the window. My hands fumbled with the iron latch in the dark. My fingers felt numb, clumsy before I finally shoved the glass pane open.
The wind hit me first. It wasn't the crisp autumn breeze from the festival. It was a hot, erratic gust that smelled of sulfur and burning pine.
I looked out.
It was pitch black the kind of darkness you only get in the deep countryside where the stars are the only light. But the stars were gone.
To the east, near the edge of the dense forest, a dull, throbbing orange glow lit up the underbelly of the low-hanging clouds. It pulsed like an infection. It wasn't a campfire. It wasn't a chimney fire. It was a massive, expanding wall of flame, consuming the tree line at a speed that defied nature.
"That's not normal," I muttered, my stomach dropping into the soles of my feet. "That's spreading too fast."
I turned from the window, stumbling in the dark. I grabbed my trousers from the chair, pulling them on with trembling hands, nearly tripping as I hopped on one leg. I didn't bother with a tunic or socks; I just grabbed my heavy wool coat and threw it over my nightshirt, buttoning it wrong.
I burst out into the hallway. The door to the nursery was wide open.
Sylvia was pacing the floor. She looked small in her nightgown. She was rocking both babies in her arms, bouncing them rhythmically, desperate to soothe them. But it wasn't working. Her face was pale, drained of all blood, illuminated only by the moonlight filtering through the hall window. Her eyes were wide, darting around the room, checking the corners as if monsters were already there.
"It's okay, shhh, it's okay," she whispered, over and over, like a broken record. Her voice wavered, cracking on the edges.
Roxas stepped out of their bedroom.
He wasn't the jovial father from the festival. He was dressed in his casual clothes, trousers, a thick shirt, and heavy work boots. He wasn't wearing his apron. He wasn't carrying a tool. He looked grim. His jaw was set so hard I could see the muscle twitching in his cheek.
"Dad," I said, my voice sounding small, swallowed by the chaos. "There's a fire in the forest. It's big."
"I know," Roxas said, his voice low and steady, a stark contrast to the panic in the air. He walked past me, heading for the stairs with a heavy, purposeful stride. "I saw the glow."
I grabbed the banister. "Where are you going?"
"I'm going to check it out with some of the other men in the village," he said, pausing at the top of the landing.
He turned back. He looked at Sylvia, who had stopped pacing, her eyes locked on him with terrifying desperation. Then he looked at me. His gaze was intense, conveying a weight I wasn't ready to carry.
"Stay inside. Lock the doors. Do not open them for anyone unless you hear my voice."
"Roxas—" Sylvia started, taking a step forward, clutching the girls so tight I thought she might bruise them. "Don't."
"I have to," he said. "I'll be right back."
He didn't say 'I love you.' He didn't say goodbye. He just turned and descended into the dark.
The heavy thud of the front door closing echoed through the house like a gunshot. Then the clack of the deadbolt.
He was gone.
I walked over to Sylvia. Sora was thrashing in her arms, red-faced and screaming, her tiny fists bunching up Sylvia's gown. I reached out and took her.
"I've got her, Mom," I said, my voice shaking. "I've got her."
Sylvia looked at me. For a second, she didn't seem to recognize me. Then she blinked, her eyes shimmering with unshed tears. She nodded, clutching Iris closer to her chest.
We stood there in the dim hallway, frozen in a tableau of fear. The only sounds were the terrifying wails of my sisters and the wind howling outside, rattling the windowpanes in their frames.
We're safe here, I told myself. The house is sturdy. Roxas is strong. It's just a fire.
Then the sky broke.
CRACK-BOOM.
The second explosion wasn't distant. It was right on top of us.
The floorboards beneath my feet jumped inches into the air. Dust rained down from the ceiling rafters, coating my hair in grey powder. The windows rattled so hard I thought they would shatter.
"Mom," I said, handing Sora back to her quickly. "I need to check."
"Percy, no! Your father said to stay inside!" Her voice pitched up, bordering on hysteria.
"I'm just going to the porch," I lied. "I need to see where it is. If it's close, we might need to run."
I didn't wait for an answer. I couldn't. The curiosity and the dread were pulling me like a physical tether.
I turned and ran down the stairs, my bare feet slapping against the wood, slipping on the dust. I reached the front door. My hand hovered over the bolt for a second.
Do you really want to know?
I threw the bolt back and yanked the door open.
I stepped out onto the porch.
The world had gone mad.
In the distance, toward the village, I heard it.
Screams.
Not the cries of babies. The screams of adults. Thousands of them, overlapping into a chaotic, terrifying roar that carried on the wind. It was a sound of collective agony, a sound that stripped away humanity and left only fear.
I looked up.
High in the night sky, hundreds of feet above the village, the clouds were no longer black. They were a violent, bruising purple and blood-red.
Then, the light appeared.
It wasn't lightning. It was thousands of distinct points of light, burning with a furious, white-hot intensity. They hung suspended in the air for a heartbeat, a constellation of death arranged in a perfect grid.
I could feel it from here. The static hum in my veins flared up, vibrating in sympathy with the sheer amount of energy gathering above.
That's not a forest fire, my mind screamed..
Gravity took hold.
The arrows of light didn't arc. They didn't float. They fell straight down. Vertical beams of concentrated plasma raining from the heavens like the wrath of a god.
They slammed into the earth around the village.
CRASH. CRASH. CRASH.
The ground shook violently, throwing me against the railing. Massive plumes of fire erupted where the arrows landed, turning the night into a blinding day. The impacts weren't just fire; they were kinetic. Buildings weren't just catching alight, they were being obliterated.
Then came the shockwave.
A wall of displaced air and heat ripped outward from the impact zone. It tore across the open fields, flattening the tall grass instantly. The oak trees groaned, their branches whipping violently, stripping the remaining leaves in a single second.
I raised my arms to shield my face, but it was useless.
The gust slammed into me like a physical blow from a giant's fist. It lifted me off my feet and threw me backward. I hit the wooden deck of the porch hard, sliding until my back slammed against the doorframe.
My head spun. My ears were ringing, a high-pitched eeeeeeee that drowned out the world.
I blinked, trying to clear the spots from my vision. Through the ringing in my ears, I could hear a faint, muffled sound from upstairs.
My sisters were still crying. They were alive.
I scrambled to my feet, bracing myself against the railing. I looked toward the village.
Smoke. Fire. Chaos.
"Roxas," I gasped. The name tore out of my throat, raw and painful.
My father was down there. He had run straight into the impact zone. He was strong, but he was a carpenter. He wasn't a mage. He couldn't stop that.
Reason vanished. Fear vanished. Replaced by a cold, singular drive.
I jumped off the porch steps, landing hard in the dirt. I sprinted toward the gate.
"Dad!" I screamed, though the wind snatched the word away and swallowed it whole.
I hit the dirt road running. I ran harder than I had ever run in my life, harder than when I pitched in the championships, harder than when I ran from the police in Tokyo.
The tunnel of trees, the one that had been a golden canopy of joy just hours ago was now a nightmare tunnel. The shadows stretched long and twisted in the flickering orange light of the burning forest. The trees looked like skeletal fingers reaching down to grab me.
As I got closer, the heat hit me. It was a physical wall, smelling of sulfur, burning pine, and something worse.
I saw movement ahead.
Villagers were running toward me, away from the square. Their faces were twisted masks of terror, illuminated by the fires behind them. Some were carrying children; others were limping.
One man ran past me. It was the blacksmith. His face was covered in soot, and his shirt was soaked in dark blood. His eyes were wide, unseeing, fixed on some horror behind him.
"Turn back!" he shrieked at me, grabbing my shoulder with a bloody hand before shoving me aside. "Run, kid! They're killing everyone! Run!"
I stumbled but didn't fall. I ignored him. I dodged past a woman dragging a heavy trunk, weeping openly.
Then, I saw them.
Emerging from the smoke near the edge of the village were figures.
They were soldiers. But they weren't the village guard. They were dressed in armor I had never seen before. They wore heavy chainmail coifs that covered their heads and necks, topped with conical steel helmets that had a nasal guard extending down over their noses, obscuring their faces. Long, beige surcoats hung over their armor, stained with soot and dirt.
They moved with terrifying precision. They weren't panicking. They were hunting.
I skidded to a halt behind a large oak tree just off the road, my breath catching in my throat.
One of the soldiers raised a sword. A villager, a man I didn't recognize, was stumbling away, tripping over his own feet.
The soldier didn't hesitate. He didn't shout a command. He just stepped forward and swung.
Schlick.
It was a clean, brutal sound. The blade cut through the man's neck. He collapsed instantly, a marionette with its strings cut. The soldier stepped over the body without even looking down, wiping the blade on his surcoat.
I squeezed my eyes shut for a second, my heart hammering so hard it hurt.
Murder.
This wasn't a battle. It was a slaughter.
I forced my legs to move. Roxas. I had to find Roxas. He was big. He was a fighter. He would be fighting back.
I left the main road, cutting through the backyards of the outlying cottages to avoid the soldiers. I vaulted over fences and scrambled through hedgerows, thorns tearing at my coat and skin.
I reached the edge of the village square.
I stopped.
I stood frozen, my hands hanging uselessly at my sides.
The square... the place where we had danced just last night... was gone.
The hay bales were burning, sending thick, choking black smoke into the air. The bakery stall was smashed to splinters. The beautiful garlands of dried flowers were ash, floating in the hot air like grey snow.
I looked to the left.
Wilder Woodworks.
My father's shop. The building he had built with his own hands. The place where I had learned to sand wood.
It was an inferno. The roof had collapsed inward. Flames licked out of the broken windows, devouring the dark oak timber. The beautiful, hand-carved sign was lying in the mud, split in half and burning.
"No..." I whispered.
And the bodies.
They were everywhere.
The ground was littered with the dead. Men, women, children.
I saw Grawn, the baker. He was lying face down near his smashed stall. His flour-covered apron was stained red. He wasn't moving.
I saw Niles and Yuna. They were near the bench where they had been star-gazing. Niles was slumped over Yuna, as if trying to shield her. A spear was driven through his back. Yuna's hand was still gripping his.
I felt bile rise in my throat.
I looked toward the well.
Ryan. The boy who had dropped the frog.
He was lying on his back. His eyes were open, staring at the burning sky. There was a crossbow bolt in his chest. Kipley was next to him, curled into a ball.
My knees began to shake. The strength left my legs.
The smell hit me then. It wasn't just woodsmoke anymore. It was the sickly, sweet, metallic scent of charred meat and copper blood. It coated my tongue.
I stood there, a six-year-old boy in a coat, paralyzed amidst the burning ruins of his world.
The static hum of mana in my body was gone, replaced by a cold, hollow void. I couldn't think. I couldn't cast. I couldn't move.
I just watched the flames consume everything I loved.
Then, amidst the roaring flames and the smell of copper, I felt it.
It wasn't a sound. It wasn't a sight. It was a sensation that started at the base of my spine and clawed its way up to the back of my skull, freezing every drop of blood in my veins along the way.
It was a feeling I had never experienced in two lifetimes.
It felt like the air around me had suddenly turned into needles. It felt like an invisible hand had reached into my chest and squeezed my heart until it stopped beating. It was primal. It was the biological, undeniable certainty that something was standing right behind me, holding a scythe to my neck.
It was the presence of Death. Not the concept, but the entity. Cold. Absolute. Impatient.
My skin crawled, every hair on my arms standing straight up in an agonizing wave of static dread. My breath locked in my lungs. My vision narrowed down to a pinprick, the edges of the world darkening as my brain screamed one single word: DIE.
Then—
BOOM.
The world to my right disintegrated.
I didn't hear the explosion so much as I felt it annihilate my senses. A house ten feet away erupted.
The shockwave hit me like a runaway train.
One second, I was standing on the dirt. Next, I was weightless. The force lifted me off my feet and hurled me sideways. The world spun in a violent, sickening blur of orange fire and black sky. I was a ragdoll, a leaf caught in a hurricane.
CRUNCH.
I hit the ground.
I didn't roll. I didn't slide. I slammed into the packed earth with the force of a car crash. My shoulder took the brunt of it, sending a white-hot bolt of lightning shattering through my nerve endings. My head whipped back, bouncing off the dirt.
The air left my lungs instantly.
I lay there, staring up at the smoke-choked stars, gasping like a fish on dry land. Hrrk... hrrk...
Everything hurts. It wasn't just my shoulder. My ribs felt like they had been crushed in a vice. My skin felt flayed. A high-pitched ringing screamed in my ears, drowning out the roar of the fire.
I tried to push myself up. My arms trembled and gave out. I collapsed back into the mud, coughing up the taste of iron and ash.
Through the haze of pain and the ringing in my ears, I heard crunching.
Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.
Boots. Heavy, armored boots stepping on broken glass and gravel.
I forced my eyes open. My vision was swimming, smeared with tears and dust, but I saw them.
Five silhouettes emerged from the smoke.
They walked slowly, without urgency. They moved like machines. As they got closer, the firelight illuminated the details I had missed from a distance.
They were terrifying.
Their armor was a patchwork of dull steel and hardened leather, dented and scarred from battles I couldn't imagine. The chainmail coifs draped over their shoulders were rusted in spots. Their beige surcoats were stiff with grime and fresh, dark stains that looked black in the low light.
They wore conical helmets with a slab of steel coming down over the nose, leaving only their eyes visible. But I couldn't see their eyes. Just dark, hollow pits where humanity should have been. They held drawn swords, blades polished in blood.
One of them stopped right in front of me.
He towered over my broken form, blocking out the burning sky. I looked up at him, my vision fading in and out. I tried to crawl backward, digging my heels into the dirt, but my body refused to obey. I was paralyzed by a terror so deep it felt like my soul was shivering.
The soldier leaned down, the chainmail rattling softly. He tilted his head, looking at me like I was a stepped-on insect that hadn't quite died yet.
"Hey," he said. His voice was gruff, scratching like gravel on glass. "He survived the Hellflame."
A second figure stepped up behind him. This one was larger, holding a torch in one hand and a sword in the other.
"Take him to the carts," the second voice rumbled. It was deep, devoid of empathy. A voice that gave orders to kill as easily as it ordered dinner.
The first soldier grunted.
He looked down at me one last time. I saw his boot pull back.
I tried to flinch. I tried to scream. But I was frozen, locked in the grip of that overwhelming, cold dread.
The steel-toed boot lashed out.
CRACK.
It connected with the side of my head. A burst of white light exploded behind my eyes, followed instantly by—
Black.