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I have to go to him!Nothing he did allowed him to pass through, and every second longer inside it constricted his chest, his lungs, his very heart.

“Let me out! Aleron!”

Aleron spared him a glance and then tried to crawl in his direction.

Ingram’s claws snapped, bending at the nail beds. He broke multiple fingers trying to get through. He would have cracked his own skull just to get to his kindred’s side, to bring him into this temporary safety he’d found.

“I’m sorry,” the Witch Owl cried out, before a shuddering sob broke from her.

He didn’t understand why. He didn’t care. He just attempted to get free.

Panic lodged in every muscle and bone in his body, every fibre of his being. His heart was beating so erratically in his large chest that it felt moments from giving out.

Aleron’s yelp cut short, followed by a loud, sharp, and harrowingcrack!

The Demons who were crawling on top of the protective dome disappeared. The forest disappeared. The dirt and the sky, gone.

The only thing that remained was the dark, clawed hand that lifted a large fragment of a bat skull, and the second that held a lower jaw.

Ingram’s heart stopped.

A piece of it shattered and lodged deep within his soul, piercing it so profoundly he knew nothing could remove it.

The Demons’ cheer was drowned out when his orbs turned so crimson it was blinding, and he let loose a feral, frothing roar. He noted the red droplets of liquid that floated and hovered around his empty eye sockets, as though he was crying ethereal tears. They looked like droplets of human blood as he let loose.

They’d killed his kindred, destroyed his friend... hishome.They had broken the only thing that had ever mattered to him,wouldever matter to him.

He didn’t truly understand its meaning, but the love he held for Aleron was of its purest form in all the world, and any other. They were each other’s shadow, each other’s warmth, and the shared voice that nursed any tender aches that tried to form within their hearts and minds.

They were one being split into two forms.

Losing all will to care for his own wellbeing, Ingram’s determination to escape doubled.

He attacked the dome keeping him away. The dome that had kept him from protecting Aleron, that had forced Ingram to be nothing but a spectator while he died.

It finally cracked under his rabid and uncontrolled twisting, squirming barrage. Yet, it never let him through, not even as he started bashing his skull and horns against it, uncaring if he broke his own head in the process.

Nothing else was able to take his attention except for the multiple Demons fighting for a fragment of skull – for a shared piece of the reward.

Every action, every word from them, sunk him further and further into hopelessness.

“I’m so sorry,” the Witch Owl whispered behind him. “Please forgive me.”

Her voice reminded him of her presence.

Between the moment she’d spoken, and when he spun around, she had just enough time to turn incorporeal before he descended upon her. It was barely a second, but she’d escaped him.

He didn’t know where she’d gone as he darted his raven skull one way and then the other, having to twist his head to properly see around his white beak for anything close by. Occasionally, he thought he saw intangible white moving within his form, like she’d hidden inside his massive body, but he couldn’t be sure.

Before long, his chaotic mind drew back to the circle of Demons surrounding him and this wretched dome. The shadowy beasts with void-like skin were either sitting or standing there, waiting for the dome to be released or for him to break his way through it.

They snickered, called out, and teased.

Those that held his kindred’s skull taunted him with the pieces, often inciting more fighting between each other. Every time he saw a white skull fragment, his single-minded desire to escape his containment grew more ferocious.

He wanted to collect each piece.

They were his. His to keep, to heal, to touch, to guide, and hopefullyrevive. Because he refused... he refused to believe this was the end for Aleron.