Lucrys trudged across the valley. The newly-widowed mountains sat void in the distance, with light traces of their departed scattering the blackness like green waves crashing against shore. Rivers drifted slowly down the mountains, cursing the bleak soil and depriving it of its lifeless form.

     “Lucrys,” I heard Amillara behind me. “Welcome back. I think you’re breaking our home. You should’ve just opened your eyes.” She danced around me, swirling and rocking in short fits of laughter and strange convulsions. “Don’t you remember me?” she asked. “You had a gift for me, didn’t you?” I held my ring out to her. But there was no way it could be her. I knew where I was. This place wasn’t real. This was all in my mind. No one else was here. No one else could truly be here. Especially not her. “You aren’t Mil,” I said. I smiled, sure of my accusation. I was finally on my way to see the real Amillara. No ghost would fuck with my head. “You’ll lose everything, you know.” The world began to spin. Flowers spread throughout the field. Strange flowers that seemed to drape inside out. They were blue. I couldn’t help but think I’d seen them somewhere before. But I had no idea where they had come from. “What are these, Mil?” I stammered. The sky began to glow, dancing from red to blue. Back and forth. Stone crumbled from empty pockets of sky, reminding me of the stone I’d seen in the sewers where the corpse had been. A river flowed toward me from one of the distant mountains. I peered into the depths. My complexion was far different from what I’d remembered. Skaarin had taken care of me, indeed. The shallow depths shifted. Slowly, they began to take form and manifest. Skaarin crawled from the water, broken tree stumps crashing into his leg. He picked up a twig and forced it through my torso with a laugh. “Hey, Lucrys,” he chimed. He wandered around me for a moment, murmuring and mumbling about revenge and love. About shit and gods. About immortality and magnius. He turned to me after a moment, his clothes set aflame, shedding embers toward his arm. “Lucrys, look, you need to fucking do this task. If you don’t, things are going to go to hell.” His arm set aflame, and he waded off into the water. His arm kept burning as he lay down. The water rushed around him, swirling around until it became a small, teal pool. Something scratched at my skin. Peeled flesh straight from bone. I wanted to scream. But as Skaarin stood again, I remembered that the pain didn’t matter. Any wound I obtained would regenerate. Skaarin shuffled around in the pond for a moment, throwing out weapons and nails and other objects I’d painstakingly grown accustomed to over the past year. He threw a large axe at my feet. I noticed it all too well. He reached into the pond once more and pulled out a small girl. “Whoops,” he exclaimed. “Well shit, Lucrys. It’s a little hard for our pasts to not haunt our asses, now isn’t it?” The girl wandered toward me, wading through the water. A black cloud dispersed beneath the surface, echoing out around her like sin. “Big brother?” she asked. “Hey, you.” She rubbed her eyes. “Where’s my big brother?” I watched as the pool blackened and Skaarin stopped moving. He seemed to get stuck, as though the spreading blackness were adhesive. He sunk underneath the pitch. “Oh,” he chuckled. Amillara crumbled from the spot he’d sunk into. Dirt and stone flaked away from her, and she shook her hair of the debris. “You really almost forgot that this was all a punishment, didn’t you? Come now, Lucrys. Really?” Her voice was daunting. Tantalizing. Her head cocked to the side. Her red lips gleamed and reflected as a short burst of light illuminated her. Everything went black. I could feel her breath on my throat. Her teeth barred right before me. She looked up and smiled, dropping her dress. “It’s how you kill, right?” She smiled and pressed against me. She was warm. Just the way I’d remembered her. She felt just like the real Amillara. I fell to my knees under her embrace. She kneeled before me, keeping my head upright with her fingers. She looked down at me. Her eyes were as gentle as ever. She descended calmly, pressing her soft lips to mine sweetly, the way Amillara always had. Her fingers pressed through my skin, scraping along my throat and tearing into my chest. “You’ll never die now.” She lamented me for it. “We’ll never lie by the ocean." I stood up. The phantoms were gone. I could hear an echoing laughter around me. “Lucrys, Lucrys, Lucrys,” it chanted. Voices all around me, circling me like prey. “Remember your sins, Lucrys,” Skaarin said. Then came Amillara’s voice. “You’re a murderer, Lucrys. You murdered your father. You killed those poor children and that man. You killed that woman. And you murdered me. You’re just like Alucin.” The rivers rushed from the mountains, sloshing quickly into a crimson tide. It rushed around me as I tried to run. But the rivers were everywhere. The mountains set ablaze, presenting what had come before I’d arrived. I was sucked within the depths of the glistening, scarlet lake. My lungs wouldn’t break. Skaarin’s concoction was too great. I would do nothing as I lost my breath beneath the surface. I could feel as the water temperature dropped, freezing the lake over. My legs went numb as they froze in place. I tried to scream. But flailing would get me nothing. As I opened my mouth for help, for an escape from the fear, the tides entered my lungs.