“My love!” A sudden, sharp voice emanated from the forest below.

  My senses habitually flared, and I found myself looking down into the snow beneath me. In the dim light of the crimson moonlight, I saw what appeared to be a woman in her sixties or seventies. She was kneeling in the snow next to an object I couldn’t see very well.

  I slowly dove down, landing on a tree branch and perching almost like a cat. I narrowed my eyes, getting a closer look. The woman was clad in farmer's attire, and she was clearly crying, as her tear-stricken face was illuminated in the red light above her, making her complexion look almost porcelain.

  After a moment of looking, my eyes widened as I caught sight of what she was looking at. It was a body without a head, wrapped in vines and half-submerged into the earth. The snow around the body had darkened, stained with a myriad of bodily fluids. It took me a moment, but I quickly grasped the circumstances behind the body's grisly appearance.

  Back when me and Kael were hunting for the rogues, we had encountered two men walking down a trail. The first one we took back to Clifton for medical examination, the other’s head mysteriously exploded. Kael had raised his arms, saying it wasn’t his doing. If it wasn’t Kael, then what was it?

  I didn’t have time to answer those questions, nor did I need to answer them. All that was needed at this moment was to help this elderly woman. If I was with Kael much longer, he would have shrugged her off as if she were an insect, but this is me—Isaac—not Silas.

  “What happened?” I asked, walking over to her.

  Before I had approached her, I made sure to land on the ground first, as the sight of anyone with ghastly wings would surely put anyone unprepared into cardiac arrest. When I approached her, the woman flinched but quickly restrained herself from acting erratically.

  Her hands were sealed behind woven gloves, and her silver-colored hair was contained within a winter-woven bonnet on her head. Her face was deep with wrinkles, and her eyes were sunken like ravines one would find in the depths of the forest—the one Kael had stopped before.

  “M-my love… What happened to him?” She belted, her grip on the headless body akin to a child refusing to part with their favorite stuffed animal.

  I slowly took a step forward, trying my hardest not to scare her. I raised my hands defensively as I knelt down, before running them along the contours of the man's jacket.

  “I don’t know; these injuries look beyond the scope of anything that can be fixed with surgery.”

  “Don’t tell me a bear got to him! He and his friend went out to hunt for sport like they always do, but neither of them returned to my cottage. I went out just an hour ago to look for them, but I only found my dear husband… mutilated like a rabid dog.”

  I sighed softly, running my hand through my hair. “Well, I know where your other friend is; he’s being held back in my village.”

  “Clifton? That hell-hole is your place?” I noticed as her eyes marginally darkened upon saying that.

  “Hell-hole? I’d say that’s far from true. And if we are to get there soon, I recommend we already begin moving.”

  I hadn’t forgotten about what I had seen in that vision. If Kael really set up Clifton for failure, to watch it burn to the ground before his eyes, and if I was supposed to stand beside him, then that’s a future I’d fight tooth and nail to forget.

  My hand wrapped around the elderly woman's hand as we began to speed-walk through the snow. She looked back at the headless corpse of her husband.

  “We’ll give him a proper burial when we return. For now, we should look at those who are living, those who are still with us.”

  Hearing my words, the old woman smiled a little, her grip around my wrist tightening marginally. “You’re quite the gentlemen.”

  “Others would say more crude things about me, but… I appreciate the comment, I really do.”

  We walked in silence for about five minutes before another question rang through the air, one that made my blood stop like a frozen river.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  “You do know how to care for someone, do you have people who care about you?”

  “Huh?” I looked back at her for a moment, feeling the urge to scoff and brush off the question. But, for some reason, I felt a bottomless pit form in my stomach.

  “You look quite young, about fifteen or sixteen years old. I can tell your parents raised you right.”

  “None of my parents really raised me… I simply fought for myself most of the time. I mean, I have friends back where I came from before I came here, but I’m…”

  “Scared. You’re scared, aren’t you?”

  I practically froze in place, unable to speak as I looked back at the woman once more. She had spelt out my entire emotional state in only a sentence—not even a long one. My lips twitched, and I felt that strange tightening in my chest, the same constriction that occurs when someone punches you straight in the heart.

  I sputtered the words out, my throat tightening as it felt harder and harder to speak with trembling. “Y-yeah… I’m scared, I’m confused… I don’t know what to do anymore.”

  The woman’s brows furrowed, not in anger or disdain, but in something reminiscent of empathy and understanding.

  “I look into your eyes, and I see the gaze of a boy who wants to run away. I understand it fully, dear.”

  “B-but what if you don’t understand me? I’m destined to do very evil things, things that I’ve never wanted to do. When I try to do good… I’m thwarted by evil, I’m beaten, abused; the people in my life try to twist evil into something good—they’re the type to sugarcoat murder as justice, and justice as murder.”

  “Well… may I have your name?”

  “My name?...”

  The elderly woman nodded. “You know someone a lot better when you know their name, and it makes conversation… well… less awkward.”

  “I-it’s Isaac… just… Isaac.” It felt like a large weight had been lifted off of my chest the moment I said that.

  “Isaac? I love that name, I heard it means laughter.”

  “It does now?” I couldn’t help but chuckle self-deprecatingly.

  She nodded her head. “In some languages, yes, it does.

  “Now, I may not know squat about you, but anyone is able to be helped, isn’t that right?”

  “I… suppose so. We have to get to Clifton to help them… I fear they’re in danger.”

  I watched as the old woman huffed, shaking her head. “They’ve needed help for a while; please don’t tell me you actually live there.”

  “I do live there, I’ve lived there for the past… week or so.”

  “So you were there the moment that cult showed up and flipped the place on its head? I’m sure even an infant could remember it with a golden memory. They conducted some kind of ritual, summoning some hooky magic and channeling the energies of the townspeople.”

  “What?” I felt my heart leap for a moment. A wave of adrenaline washed over me as I urged her to keep explaining.

  “Isaac, listen carefully to me now. This cult isn’t just your average walking church, they’re experienced and dangerous. They worship an ancient Angel… What's His name again?”

  I cut her off in the middle of her musing. “Khorvath.”

  “W-well, this Khorvath angel is very, very special to the group in some kind of way… He’s like their master of sorts.”

  “What do they want to do with Khorvath?”

  Suddenly, the woman extended two hands, placing them on my shoulders and squeezing them. “Kael and his group, they want to channel Clifton’s energies in a ritual by burning it to the ground, using that symbolic destruction to bring Him back from the grave.”

  My mind raced with more questions than answers. “W-why would they want Khorvath back? Isn’t he the literal Apocalypse Angel?”

  “It’s written in stone. He will return, and He will wreck vengeance on the world which has wronged Him.”

  I took a sharp step back, my guard raising. “H-how do you know about angelic matters? Even if I'm not invested too deeply in those concepts… wouldn’t that cause damage to you?”

  At that moment, the old woman let out a chuckle as her body exploded into a fit of black smoke, gradually turning into another figure. A pair of elven ears stretched from her skull, accompanied by bronze-colored skin and crimson hair and eyes. Kael emerged from the smoke, snatching me by my collar and dragging me forward.

  “When you’re over half a millenia old, you absorb more knowledge than most textbooks.”

  Kael looked into the distance, chuckling. “Now, let’s see if Clifton really buys your message… Isaac.”

  His body expanded, growing taller as he shifted to his Titan form, darting off into the forest. I watched as the forest moved by in the blur, unable to wring myself from his grip.

  “Let me go, damn it!” I didn’t know what exactly to do next, so I bit down on Kael’s fingers.

  This action made him yelp in pain, temporarily giving me the strength to break myself free. The moment I had enough wriggle room, I fell from Kael’s palms and into the snow below. I sprung to my feet, making a defensive posture with my fists raised.

  “Why leak such important information about yourself? With that, I have everything Clifton should know about you and your plot.”

  Kael—still in his Titan body—turned back to me. His gaze fell on the small teethmarks on his palm, brushing off the blood that leaked from the open wounds. I watched as the flesh of his skin patched over the skin, resealing the bite marks.

  “It’s so simple that not even an infant would cock their head in confusion. They’ll notice the absurdity of the tale, deem you the lunatic—the oppressor to my cause of helping them and their crops—and have you executed for your sacrilege.”

  I scoffed, looking around. “Don’t make me guess. The famine that’s caught Seraphis, Katshin, and everyone else by surprise, is also the doing of you and your cult?”

  Kael fell silent for a moment, his ashen-gray skin darkening back to its metallic hue. His form returned to normal as he spoke in a calm, collected, and matter-of-fact tone.

  “No, it’s your doing.”