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With a sudden jerk, Evan stumbled to his knees as the Shadow brought his cupped palms close to his chest, trying to protect Evan while his own body was slowly dissolving into black mist. Those two red eyes dimmed.

“What…what’s happening?” Without thinking twice, Evan reached out and touched the Shadow’s chest to soothe the rumble emanating from it. But as soon as his palm felt the translucent Shadow, a current zapped through Evan’s arm.

A blinding white light filled his vision.

Evan froze.

The sounds from his surroundings—the roars of the Hellguard and Xen's low chuckle—all muted into white noise. Flash after flash of broken visions burned through his nerves and assaulted his mind.

A vision of a small hand reaching towards a clawed finger. A figure lounging on a tree branch, long hair cascading down like vines. Fire. Burning houses, screaming faces.

Blood… So much blood.

And then a voice. A whisper overpowering the screams…

“I’ll wait for you.”

Evan clutched his head and collapsed into the trembling palms of the Shadow, his pupils blown wide.

Screams rattled through his skull. The stench of fire and smoke choked his lungs. Hands clawed up his body—tearing through flesh, ripping tendons, crushing his bones.

He couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t speak. Couldn’t think. Someone had set his body on fire, and he burned. Turned to ash. Disintegrated.

Stop. Make it stop.Evan gritted his teeth.

Stop. Stop. Stop.

STOP!

Another flash of white blazed. A new vision occupied the dark canvas of his closed lids.

The loud wailings faded, swallowed by an unsettling silence. And in that stillness, the vision unfolded: a butterfly tumbling from the sky, its wings on fire.

Evan’s body stilled like a vice had tightened around him.

The image blurred and refocused on the burning butterfly as it spun and fell lifelessly from the sky. There was something so devastating yet beautiful—almost familiar—about the way it descended. But the closer the image came, the faster Evan’s heart raced.

That body wasn’t that of a butterfly anymore.

Cocooned between the mighty, blazing wings was a human-like body, horns twisted between tangles of dark hair. Bloody, clawed hands reached for the distancing sky almost longingly. As it tumbled, the head turned. From amidst the dark locks of hair, two eyes burned bright.

Two scarlet eyes—

The Shadow’s palms flickered beneath him...then disappeared. With a terrified yelp, Evan tumbled through the empty space.

A scream lodged halfway up his throat as he plummeted, heading fast and straight towards the wall of thorns, its jaws wide open to swallow him whole.

But before he hit the thorns and tore himself to shreds, something struck him sideways. It sent him flying across the area. Then, like a cushion placed just for him, it broke his fall.

With his heart roaring in his ears and lungs threatening to escape through his nostrils, Evan looked beneath him—only to see the massive Shadow’s palm beneath him before it dissolved away.

“No…” Evan shook his head, still disoriented from the flashes of vision. Before he could ponder over what he’d seen or why, a sudden roar tore through the night sky and knocked his unsteady brain back into place.

Evan had fallen several meters away from the temple and the wall of thorns. He stood up on wobbly legs and took off in the direction of that ear-splitting roar.

Boom!

A blast of light erupted into the sky, turning night into day. Evan rounded the thorn walls and came to an abrupt halt near the frozen body of the Hellguard. The demon stood as still as the rock he was made up of, and although he was turned away from Evan, he could tell that white light was bursting through the hole on his head, his core.