Fragments.

Just like broken, scattered moments in time. Hastily and clumsily, trying to reach out and make sense of it all.

Shattered glass...

Old photographs recovered...

Like some sort of dream sequence.

Memories, resurfacing...

Tom's eyes were inverted, a menacing stare. He had me pinned to the wall.

His mouth was moving and he was saying something.

Background noise dimmed to a dullness and the only surround sound was his voice. The rest of the world sunk away and all that was left was the feeling I was submerged.

And all that remained of reality was Tom's voice ringing out - a low, demonic resonance.

"What is yours is now mine. For as long as you are under my possession, you shall remain obedient. Surrender yourself..."

I was entranced by the way his smoldering fingertips swept across my steady gaze - a captivating, hypnotic enchantment from a single motion.

A heaviness fell over me. The air seemed to tense and smother.

"Listen carefully, Marco. You will not show any affections for Star. In fact, you will no longer talk to her. If she crosses your path, you will simply ignore her as if she isn't there. If she persists, you will do whatever it takes to get rid of her. If you resist my power, you will suffer the drastic consequences."

And then, in an instant, everything flashed. Tom's incantation became lost in an abyss, a dwindling echo.

Gone in a blink. Like a time jump made - a new fragment. A new piece to the indecipherable puzzle.

Before I even had enough time to make sense of what had just happened, everything had flashed in an instant. Like the lightning of a storm.

Different images and altering visions began to bleed together. Yet, despite being brief, flashing glimpses of time, I could still recall it all so vividly.

The strangling grip I had on her throat.

The way she thrashed and struggled to come up for a gasping breath of air.

The way I anchored her down in the stream with my own weight.

The deafening command I couldn't seem to resist, therefore she had to pay dearly for ever crossing me.

"If she persists, you will do whatever it takes to get rid of her."

Her neck, darkly bruised and swollen.

My hands were a trembling mess.

Tom - he was there, shouting at me yet I couldn't quite hear him over the deafening white noise.

The last fragment of recollection - a haunting presence.

Star, laying by the stream. Though, for some reason, I knew it to be the grim truth. Her stillness, her mute silence. Her face, flushed and devoid of color.

...

I cried out, trying desperately to swat away the hands from my face.

"No, stop - stop it!" I shouted. My voice was gravelly, on the edge of a break, as if I might cry.

Her touch drew back quickly. I staggered back, retracting myself up against the wall.

My breath seemed to be lodged in my throat. The more I tried to heave it, the more my head swayed and the back of my throat stung. Like a wound reopened, sore and raw.

Some sort of quaking, paralyzing entity took over, causing a thunder in my ears, a tremor overtaking my hands. Short, shallow breaths from an unseen force - a tightening grip on my chest.

When I looked up, Star and Tom were there, latched onto one another. My commotion must've startled her, considering how far back she had to be to stumble backwards into Tom's supporting body. Everything noted her alarm - her erect wings sprung, her alert stare, her grasp reaching for Tom to sustain her balance.

Those memories - that night - how could I have forgotten so easily? Memories, locked away, buried deep - now unleashed, unearthed. How could it all be so foreign yet so...

Familiar?

And when I looked back at her, she was gaping at me. As if to seek some sort of answer. As if her thoughts could vocalize through a longing, aching stare.

"Why did you do it?"

"I... I didn't..." My voice was no more than a shaking whisper. "I didn't do it."

Of course I knew this to be the truth too. Besides, how could I have hurt someone who I had never even met?

I couldn't listen to these stupid, angelic hallucinations. I might've been a demon, but at least I knew my sins. And if I was going off the fuzzy memories of what Star had brought on to me, it wasn't me that had initiated her whole downfall.

"It was Tom." And when I spoke, it was resilient and with a newfound confidence.

The true master of it all. The demon of his own disasters. Yes, I had turned the blame to him, yet if the hallucinations were true or not, Tom deserved what was coming for him either way.

He had been nothing but cruel and spiteful. He deserved it. It was only karma, after all.

Star's eyes widened, her eyes shifting upwards and over her shoulder to the culprit. Even Tom's face read a funny kind of expression - bewildered or maybe even dumbfounded. Maybe a mix of the two.

They rose together, just as I had, slowly and steadily. Yet it was Star who had recoiled under Tom's guidance to help her up. Her stare fell to the ground.

"Tom..." She began. I could practically already hear the rising irritation in her voice. She retracted her arm from Tom's grasp roughly, backing away to measure the distance between them. "What did you do?"

I witnessed Tom struggle with the confrontation. He seemed to shrink into himself and his ears drooped in a visible sort of guilt. It was quite entertaining, to say the least. Though something of my observing stare must've agitated him. His eyes met mine, quickly averted, and a growl of audible frustration escaped him.

Maybe I struck some sort of nerve in him. In any other circumstance, he would've yelled, responded in physical aggression. In fact, I was even waiting for it - anticipating his retaliation. But, for some reason, right now was different.

And I could only guess. It had to be her - Star. She was his weakness.

"He possessed me." I said, resulting in a nasty glare in my direction.

"Hey, you stay out of this!" Tom's voice boomed, pointing sharply in my direction. His teeth were set to break from the grit force he bared them with.

"You possessed Marco? Are you serious?"

This time, Tom answered. Though it wasn't the pleasant kind. He was crippling under the spotlight of interrogation - or maybe the incriminating accusation and Star's heavy speculation was wearing him out fast.

"No! I..." His voice had reached a loud, defensive volume and he was quick to try to save himself from her disapproval.

"No? What do you mean no?" Star shouted back. She threw her fists down by her sides now and the feathers of her wings seemed to ruffle.

"Okay, yes, I possessed him! Is that what you wanted to hear, Star?" His arms flailed in the air for dramatic effect, almost as if to entertain Star's interrogation. "You caught me. Are you happy now?"

The comeback was low and Tom's last line of defense. He was losing control now, losing a fight - and to an angel, nonetheless. I didn't know whether to laugh or not at his misfortune.

Star's arms were crossed, a distinguishable disdain on her face. Then, she dropped it, a sort of sad expression becoming of her. When she spoke, her voice was quiet and devoid of any anger, just defeat.

"I should've known." She shook her head, still staring at her feet.

I witnessed Star's face contort in a sort of anguish. And when she fought back, there was a certain venom in her tone, a sharp bitterness that made my chest cave in. I could practically pinpoint the sound of her heart breaking.

"How could you?" Her voice cracked under the force, breath hitching.

Her eyes darted around the room as if to attempt to make sense of the swarming madness. She shut her eyes tight, held her head in her fists and groaned loudly.

"You're... you're so... infuriating!"

"Oh, I'm infuriating?"

"Yes!"

The verbal feud went on like this for a few more seconds, like a ping pong match. Back and forth. For every defensive claim, there was a snappy remark.

It didn't make sense to me, not at first. But as I began to silently observe, slowly it all began to click - their unfiltered talks and underlining comedic bickering.

They fought like a couple. Like past lovers.

And the more I listened, the more I gathered.

"Do you even hear yourself?"

"Y'know what? Fine!" Tom demanded, a demonic octave in his howl. "Be mad. Yell at me - I can take it!"

Quite a bold request from someone who didn't take open criticism very well.

But if I knew one damn thing about Tom at all, it was that he loved to initiate fights. And if it was a fight he wanted, it was a fight he was going to get. Besides, he was the Prince of the Underworld. Those who dared to defy him should be shown no mercy. They were to bow down to him and obey him.

"You came to the Blood Moon Ball only to ditch me for Marco!"

I definitely don't remember that.

"You almost set Marco on fire!"

Sounds like Tom - but no. Still don't remember that either.

"You encased me in a block of ice! It took me a whole week to thaw!"

Okay, I really don't remember that.

Whatever angelic poise Star had, it had now diminished. Wrath was now clouding her tranquility - one of the most dangerous vices of them all.

Silly, naive, little angel. How could you let yourself be so easily corrupted?

How could you be so blind to your own self-destruction?

"That isn't the point, Tom! Everything can't be your way. I've moved on!"

"See? There it is! The yelling - don't hold back!" The suggestion was more of a demand. He threw his hands in the air as if to surrender and open himself up to Star's rage.

If he was trying to aggravate her, it was definitely working. Her fiery eyes promised an eruption. Hell, even I had a few choice names for him.

She challenged Tom's eyes, taking him up on his offer. I couldn't blame her. If Tom would've given me the chance, I would've done the same.

It appears that he has wronged us both, one way or the other.

"You're absolutely disgusting, you know that?" It was Star's first plan of attack, the first coherent thought she could easily vocalize.

"Yes, that's good! Keep going." He persisted.

What once was a fire had now grown into feral, soaring anger.

"You're so selfish and immature and obnoxious and I hate you!" Star ceased to catch her breath, assessing another thought, then continuing. "And worst of all, you had to let Marco get involved? And you turned him into... a demon?" She gestured to me from the sidelines now.

"What?" Tom sputtered at the supposedly insane idea that Star was proposing, as if what she had said was the ultimate sin he had committed. "No, that wasn't me. I didn't-"

He took a step forward, almost as if to try to get her to listen, yet she kept the space between them and backed further away. The Main Hall's enormous size hadn't changed, yet somehow Star had never seemed smaller. The void seemed to eat her whole. She sunk back to the floor, left exhausted from the frustration.

No, not frustration - despair.

Despite the sudden silence of their booming voices, their echoes still seemed to linger in its auditorium. Another torch had dimmed in the far distance.

Star's sobs were faint, yet still had the strength to occupy throughout the vacantness of the Hall. Tom had joined her on the ground, kneeling next to her. His hand fell on her shoulder. She swatted him away.

The realization came slowly, yet when I began connecting the dots, calculating the scenarios, it all struck me at once.

The nightmares.

Tom's random outbursts.

The girl - the angel. Star.

Even stranger were the little things that suddenly occurred to me, like being unable to stand the heat of the Underworld and the loss of appetite in the presence of the pantry's food.

Even the fact that I knew every one of the castle's servants' names... yet they couldn't quite recall my own. Not that I put in any effort to make myself known throughout our staff, but it still didn't cease to strike me in some odd way.

Hell, if I was questioning everything now - and I was - maybe even my own spontaneous infection from my wings had some role to play in all of it too.

They were all connected after all - not just a set of random coincidences.

We were all brought together - tied together by the grief of an event - a tragedy.

Star's tragedy?