Prologue

The rain slowly cascaded through from his hair, dripping past his nose and onto the muddied dirt beneath him.

Every droplet of water clung to the kneeling figure, like a mother to a dying child, inching towards acceptance. Acceptance of failure. His failure.

His face was blurry under the shadows waning across his brows. The pale gleaming light of the moon seemed to resonate off of his body, creating an aura around him, glistening with revelry.

Gospels and priests would have described him as being angelic, artists would have depicted his stature as king-like, and kings would have bowed before him as the king of all kings.

He would have been beautiful to behold, had it not been for his eyes.

Eyes that screamed against his very being. Eyes which pierced and maimed. Eyes that sought vengeance, the booming and surging of war. The hunger, the hate, the envy, the anguish. His eyes never blinked, never lost focus, and continued to fume with rage.

His eyes burned more fiercely than the war around him.

The musty rain filled with the smell of blood and ash. Dying men screaming into the night, of fear, of pain. Screaming his name, their hero to save them. Whispering blame, cursing his name.

A burning ember ricocheted off of his helm, screeching into the abyss of the downpour. hissing of betrayal, weeping of trust. His trust in his comrades in arms.

Friends. The word stung against his flesh, aching in his heart. The fury he felt in his soul at their betrayal ravaged his body more than the poison from the blade they used to pierce it.

A gutteral sound leaked from the gashed throat of the kneeling man.

Faint against the roaring of the torrent, so out of place amongst the clashing of steel and grinding of metal that it forced the woman walking towards the dimensonal portal to whip around in pure terror.

Laughter.

What a terrifying sound it was. A choking, gurgling laugh. It shook her very bones, striking her to her very core.

Her face paled and her skin began to form goosebumps. The hair on the back of her neck leaped, seemingly revolting against her very skin. She scrambled for her blade, but realized too late her scabbard was empty. The blade she reached for had already been used on him.

A hand bolted from the corpse, seizing her neck and lifting her above its head. Panicked, Ilydia struggled to grip the blade from his chest, fingers scraping and slipping against the blood and the rain. Failing to reach it, she scraped and kicked against the man, bashing and digging her nails into the hand around her neck, struggling desperately to do anything to free herself from him. Her fingernails drew blood and clumps of flesh began to peel off from her attempts, but the man held firm. His face held no emotion, a stone gargoyle roosted in its perch.

With his other hand he grasped the blade, savagely yanking it out from where it stabbed his chest, and in a fluid motion, embedded its edge into her gaping neck. In continued fluidity, the knife split through, completely severing her head from her now lifeless body. Seemingly suspended, it slid from her torso, as blood covered the man head to toe, erupting like a volcano from his victim.

If he had looked to be a hero as he died, he now radiated the devil in his bloodlust. A cruel symphony of precision and death. An instrument of carnage.

Where did it all go wrong

His comrades. His friends. The other Earthens. After the start of the battle they had deserted their positions, leaving him alone to face the final Echelon despite their plan to maintain formation. And when he barely managed to defeated it, they attacked his worn and exchausted body, stabbing him in the chest with a poisoned dagger, using the chance to quickly escaped back to Earth through the portal.

Ilaydia. Lucius. Joffrey. Groken. Even Dyur? All of them betrayed me?

I had been so close. The portal was right in from of me. I could have seen my family again.

Never had he shed a tear, not after his realization that he would never be able to see his family , nor after losing his sister, nor after countless failures and years of torment from the Administrators.

Bitter tears formed for the first time since he had entered Pangea. Too weak to lament, to roar his frustration, Penn silently weeped, his tears becoming mixed with the rain, trickling down his face and onto the knife in his hands.

His fist tightened around Ilydia's blade. He could barely make out the crest on its handle, a coiling serpent.

The clan they had made together. It was all worthless now.

Trying to keep himself upright with the last of his might, his worn body finally collapsed from the strenuousness of combat.

His eyes faded into oblivion, along with his consciousness, as Penn fell face forward into the grimy mud, his body tumbling down the mountain of littered corpses behind him, as he fell into the eternal rest.