1 Prologue: Feted feathers

"Breaking from dark pits disappear, and bereaving in a gulp of air.

You found calming waters cleanse your strife, and solid ground to build your life.

With foundation built your will turned steel, with a burning passion none could steal.

To find the light that shines within, or loses your fight to demon king." – Founders of the Four poles temple.

~#~

The stillness of a clear night sky, broken by the black mist floating out of an abandoned hospital building. Atop its roof glowed fumes of embers spouting black clouds that tainted the moon in the sky.

Within the burning building there laid an underground lab that was misplaced from the rest of the apparently long abandoned hospital.

A recently made tunnel that goes down a dark flight of stairs meets with a lone set of double doors at the bottom. These doors flew off their hinges as men and women dressed in white coats ran for their lives to get out of the forsaken building.

Many had already perished by the falling rubble and rocks, caught on fire by the heated blaze or trampled over by their peers. Truly an unsightly scene to behold as peoples' scream filled the air with terror, they ran choking on the thickening fumes begging for help but receiving none.

It was every man for themselves.

Amidst the panic and beyond the double doors located down the stairs lay a room that suffered a huge gas pipe explosion. People ran back up the stairs to get out; in what looked to be the sorry remains of a chemical testing lab, a young girl slept floating in a tank filled with a yellow liquid.

The room around her moved with the chaos of collapsing rubble from the ceiling and frenzied scientists trying to save themselves.

The remains of lifeless armed guards covered in crimson are scattered all over the old hospital grounds from the bottom floor all the way up to the roof, splattered and spilt blood now decorate the once white marble floor and the rotted white walls.

Each corpse told its own story of how they met their sorry end. Some armed guards were cleanly separated from limb and body. This painted sight of death followed by the coming fire and smoke made it look like a scene out of an alien horror flick; a horrific aftermath of fallen dominoes.

As carnage ensues the young girl in the tank slept; unaware of what was going on. With the soundproof glassing of the tank, she could have very well dreamed through this waking nightmare if it was not for one remaining scientist, a man holding a thick old folder with papers tightly in his right hand halted his escape and made an effort to try and open the tank. Wearing a white lab coat like the rest of them he wrapped his arm holding the folder around his mouth in an attempt to keep the smoke out of his lungs.

With his left hand, he begins to fiddle around with the controls on the console that was attached to the tank. A few button pushes later his eyes sharpened as he coughed, the smoke was starting to affect him. And the tank had not reacted the way he wanted.

Seeing this he then dramatically swings his free arm down on the console slamming a large red button on the top left-hand corner as if taking out his frustration on it. The tank began to slide open from the top but abruptly stopped as soon as it started. He flinched in confusion as if this was not meant to happen.

Hitting the button once again in the hopes it will act differently he again looks at the tank with expecting eyes, but to no avail. Some of the liquid in the tank was freed, but not enough to take out the young girl. Pushing himself away from the console he drunkenly took two steps back as he looks at the girl in the tank peacefully resting.

In a fit of rage, he stepped forward and slammed his free arm over the whole console breaking it. He may have gotten the rage out of his system but other than a numb arm and split console it solved nothing. Shaking his head he stepped back again coughing more profoundly, his tantrum had cost him more oxygen than he could afford right now.

Learning his lesson he calmed down and just observed his test subject with mourning eyes.

Accepting the fact that he can't get her out. He quickly glanced at the files on his hand as he furtively glances at the only exit out of the underground lab. It led to the flight of stairs going to the first floor. His legs begin to reach for them without much consent from his mind and body.

He stops at the mouth of the exit to check it. It was all clear, save for a trampled body of a woman; only one of the few victims of the mindless stampede out of the room. One last time he looks back at the girl in the tank.

"Just when we were finally able to repeat our past success, such a waste." The man said under a deep, dry voice. "Father, we were so close." His head shakes in disappointment as he turns and makes for the steps fading off into the dark, smoke covered stairway.

~#~

Five minutes had passed; the man who had fled after attempting to save the girl has long gone. There was nobody else left around except for the fallen victims who attempted to escape. She remained asleep, but thanks to the tube being open, the sounds of outside reached her ears. Slowly she begins to open her eyes, becoming aware of the carnage around her.

She soon woke up in a panic. Knowing that she needs to get out, she tried kicking the glass but it did not budge. Getting nowhere fast she tried to call for help.

"Help me!! Get me out! Help!!" the trapped girl scream and pleading, but to no avail.

As the seconds went past her panic became more desperate. After all the hell she's been through she sees a chance to escape; to get home. But now she is stuck in a tube with no way out. All around her was the creeping fire and the bodies of the departed. Reality sunk in. The bitter reality that she had been enduring ever since she was captured, holding on to the hope of getting away.

It was as if someone out there was trying to prove a point that hope does not exist. Messing with her head like the injections they gave her over the start of her known existence. Anything a week before this felt like a year, anything that happened before she was caught in a midst of limbo, felt like it had happened to another person in another lifetime.

Often she would wonder if the memories of her home where in fact real, or something her imagination made up to keep from totally shutting off. Something they just implanted to toy with her further.

Even so, she did not care; real or not, all she wanted to do was to reach that place, that home village of Null. And now her chance arrives and she is already doomed at the first hurdle. Her body responds to her desperate frustration and stress in kind creating a current that tingled off her skin and built up around the tank like a balloon.

As her emotions raised so did the energy around her until at the very peak of her desperate plea like a held up sneeze it exploded in one go shattering the glass around her into thick pieces. She tumbles on top of the thick broken shards of sharp glass and hot floor cutting most of her body that landed upon it.

Covered with nothing but a long piece of thin waterproof cloth, she screamed in pain that was drowned out by the far louder snap, crackle, and popping of the burning building around her.

The shock of the pain and this alien power surging through her made the room feel like it was spinning violently in circles. Not knowing what way is up or down she collapses on her back. Her eyes had suddenly turned from brown to purple, enabling her to see four distant figures glowing in white with faint visions of the walls like see-through layered barriers.

And beyond them, shimmers of light ascending to the stars beyond; like seeing another world. It did not make sense to her. For she knew that she was looking up at the ceiling.

Is this it? Is this death? How I finally sleep? The bitter thought crossed her frail mind. Unable to move she slipped away into rest.

~#~

Natalie had woken up after passing out from shock. It had only been twenty seconds since she fell and ate glass. She had a number of cuts all the way along her legs to the side where her cheek met the ground. Slowly waking up to the pain that gave her shock in the first place, she gets up onto her feet in autopilot and makes her way up the blackened staircase.

Trampling on the sharp glass and hot floor, her feet were bleeding but the pain did not register. Adrenalin had completely taken over and her mind was transfixed on getting as far away from this hellhole as possible, to find the home she had in another life.

Making her way up the stairs, she passed the trampled body, not paying much mind to it. Completely numb and set only on one goal, she pushed on. The stairway was heavy with smoke and heat but was much cooler under her feet as she climbed up. By the time she reached the top, most of the wounds on her cheek and legs were almost completely healed. She was coughing heavily by this point and fell to her knees, where she found it easier to breathe.

Inhaling less of the same poison she takes her time to scan the new room she found herself in. The flight of stairs led to the reception where hall once filled with the smell of disinfectant and patients waiting for a simple check-up a long time ago. Now it became a shady hideout for inhumane acts. The flames seemed to make a good meal out of evil fuel. However, within its wall, it has caught an innocent girl.

She looks around for a way out within the flickering wall of flame coming from all directions until she sees it; a six-foot gap with a clear exit within sight. A trail of water that was placed there had kept the fires from the meeting. Seeing her ticket out, she takes a deep breath and makes a straight run for the gap.

Natalie almost made it out of the building until the world around her started crumbling down. As unanimous objects come crumbling down to make her tomb her body froze, fear had taken over. She was too far to make it and all seemed hopeless.

The fear of dying reached into her very core as the rubble loomed closer casting a shadow over her until her body reacted in kind. As she instinctively curls over to cover her face a pair of dark wings comes out of her back and much like her arms wrap themselves around her only they were able to cover her whole body.

The rocks came tumbling down, covering her in total darkness. A young man with a red headband lands at the foot of the rubble. Seeing the destruction of the building he puts his sword away and makes haste into the woods. If he had only taken the time to stand there for a moment longer he would have noticed the disturbance under the pile, He would have seen a girl's hand covered in the flour like rubble break its way of the heavy rocks finding the strength she never knew she had.

He catches up with another young boy wearing a green hoody comforting a crying girl in a purple vest and black quarter length shorts much their age; having a right eye that was much the same color as Natalie's when she could see through walls and a left one being brown.

If she had only looked back she would have seen the aura of an innocent survivor glowing in the dark night like a lone star. She would have seen her climb out of the rubble and collapsed onto the ground just out where the exit of the hospital once stood. Natalie had the same eyes she did and could see the three of them going off into the distance.

If they had just stopped and listened they may have caught the whispers of an extremely drained girl knocking on death's door, calling for them before losing the strength to even stay conscious.

If they only had looked back... Then things would have been very different, her burden to keep living would not have to be tested so.