His chest burned, his lungs heaved. He wanted to bolt from his house; he wanted to cling to its remains. He hated what it had become, and loved the people who had lived in it. He could remember his father, see his face, though now somewhat blurred, his reddish hair and bright brown eyes. He could hear his laugh that was so deep it felt as if it rumbled the entire house. He could smell his mother's perfume faintly, roses and violets, see her black ringlets and sea-blue eyes, depthless. He could hear her softer laugh, see her touch her hand to his father's in unconditional affection. He could see a tiny Alana, huddle close to their mother's side, and her long blonde hair braided and looped behind her head as she demanded for what was so funny. He could hear his own laughter, warm and free as joined them. His mother would lead Alana and him to their room, ignoring Alana's protests, and his father would call out a goodnight from behind them. She would tuck them each into bed, both so blissfully young and small, and kiss their foreheads as she crooned a sweet lullaby, sweeping them into sleep. He would be woken up to Alana poking his side and already nagging him to explore with her. He'd pretend to sleep for as long as he could, until she jumped on top of him and began to slap at him in the way that little siblings do. Then he'd have no choice but to lead her outside and they'd run through the hills, tumbling and rolling down their soft sides. Alana would usually find a way to get hurt, a supposedly broken thumb or toe, and cry, and he would come to her rescue, holding her and comforting her until she giggled once more and ran off, never a dull moment in her presence. He would laugh himself and run after her, both playing some role in a fairy tale.

There were no fairy tales now.

There was no family.

There was no sister.

There was him.

He clenched his eyes shut, felt his body tremble. He was lost in his bubble of self loathing and anger. He shook in rage, in fury, as a wrath like no other burned him. It was so unfair. It was so wrong. Why such wonderful people? Why his family?

Why little Alana?

People like them did not deserve to die, and people like him did not deserve to live.

It was hard for him to discern the voice that sounded outside of his realm. He was being swallowed by his memories, his vision tunneling as he remembered.

"Alias," Acacia murmured. "You don't have to tell me if it's too difficult to talk about."

He became aware of the pain searing his hands and her genuine concern through the bond, her need to reach out and help him. He had felt the same insane urge towards her when the bond acted up.

He took a step back, allowed himself to breathe. He looked down to his hands, saw the scrapes from how hard he had gripped the wall, Alana's wall, and see the blood dribbling from his cuts.

"Let me help you," Acacia said, stepping in front of him as she reached out for his hands.

He instinctively flinched from her touch, but she was determined, and she leaned for them again and held them, eyes fluttering shut as she utilized her power, let it heal his bloodied and cut palms and fingers.

He was too lost to mumble a reply, to thank her for the favor. He simply stared at the wall, and remembered leaning against it with Alana and the stories they'd make up together, the big dreams they'd share about the future that would never come.

He pulled his hands from her grasp and balled them into fists. He looked down from Acacia. She hurt to look at.

"Alias, what is it? Please tell me." She pleaded.

Words tumbled from him without his consent or knowledge. It was as if he watched himself from a distance, heard himself speak but didn't say it himself.

"What?" She said softly.

"It hurts."

She frowned. "I healed your hands... Oh." Her mouth dropped open as understanding dawned, but she snapped it shut and looked up to his eyes that wouldn't meet hers.

"Do you want to talk about it? Would that help?" She spoke to him with a sickeningly sweet voice, as if he was impaired or a child. She thought he was delicate, looked at him as if he needed healing.

"I am not broken," he muttered, but something inside him yelled out that he was.

"I never said that you were," she sighed. "I just think you need a little healing. We all do."

He frowned and looked up to her face, from her chin to her lips to her nose, but not to her eyes. Not yet. "Even you?"

"Even me. I was abandoned here, remember? People I was beginning to trust turned their backs on me. I can't imagine what leaving Community was like for you, and I can't imagine what losing your family was like."

He casted his head back down.

Acacia swallowed. "It must hurt a lot, all the time. And I can tell you miss them, that you miss her." She paused. "You say her name a lot in your sleep."

"I know," he mumbled. "I replay the scene almost every night, and if not that, I remember what she used to be like, and that's almost just as heartbreaking."

Acacia grew silent, her quietness urging him to continue, and he knew that she was probably the only person who cared, who ever would care.

He took the plunge, and wondered if he would regret it. "On the day the gods decided to deal punishment, my parents and I had run to the market to sell our crops and buy what we needed for the upcoming harvest. Alana had been particularly stubborn that morning. She refused to come with us, and after a large argument, we did. She would stay in the house. She was too afraid for us to worry that she would leave it, but when we arrived to town something was amiss. The oracle was rambling into madness, and blood poured from their eyes. People were frantic, but most went on with their lives, as nothing was yet to happen and we had jobs to do and families to provide for. But something changed when we had only been there for a few hours. There was a crash that echoed throughout the land, and the ground began to shake. Fire started to pour out of the sky, and it was horrifying when it landed. Building went up in flames, people burned to death, and as my parents and I tried to flee, the ended up caught in the fires too. I watched them burn to death, and then I had to leave their ashes to run back to Alana. She was in the house, terrified, and I tried to save her. I ran with her as far as I could from the flames, but the gods trapped us, and an evil force seized me. I lost control of myself, and Alana in return as I held her, and the next thing I knew I was jumping into a chasm. I was hurtling towards hell and gripping my little sister all the way. My plan to save use eventually led us to our doom, but the gods would've seen to it any way.

"What we entered was pitch black. We stumbled around in the dark for some indefinite amount of time until we came across other people. All the humans had been rounded up, all the ones alive that was." He muttered

"How many were there?" Acacia whispered, sliding down the wall until she sat on the ground, her back resting against the wall.

He allowed himself to sit next to her, a safe distance placed between them. "A few hundred. It was crowded, packed, and everyone was panicked, and then people began to lash out. There was chaos. People nearly killed each other. I got roughened up a bit, but I kept Alana out of it. She was one of the youngest there. Eventually, people calmed down; they began to accept that this was the fate they had been given. We eventually banned together. We broke into groups with leaders. We ventured further into the dark world, only to discover the horrors it held. Monsters of your worst nightmares ran rampant, and feasted on people for sport. The weak and unfit were picked off quickly, and the lucky ones were left. We forged on, learned to fight, crafted weapons from the stone, and struggled to survive. Someone died every other week. Our numbers dwindled down from the hundreds to only a hundred, and then to the tens. So few of us were left, and it would've continued if a man named Silvius hadn't stepped up.

"There had been tall tales of one of the Masters, the greater monsters, having a chalice that if drank from, it would give those tremendous powers, power that rivaled the monsters and would help us to survive. Being a lone brave soul, or maybe just stupid, Silvius crept into the Masters' lair and found the chalice. He crept out of unscathed and showed it proudly to the humans, insisted that it would save us. He was the first to drink and then the others. I did, but Alana refused to, and I didn't make her. She didn't need to have the power to kill when she had me. We received powers behind human comprehension, our magyk, and we now had the power to kill like the monsters. We could defend ourselves, but what we were not aware of was the price.

"The Masters eventually hunted us down, hunted Silvius down, and gutted him. They gutted almost all of the humans, until only half of us were left. The chalice was passed to a new person every day for safety. That day I was the one who carried it, and I was my group's last salvation. The Masters exclaimed that by drinking from it we had damned ourselves. Our power was not a gift, but a curse. We had condemned ourselves to be wicked like them. Our hair turned dark, our eyes burned black, and our hearts hardened to stone. We were no longer human. We were much more and less than that.

"The Masters were still enraged and seeking revenge, and so they ravaged the group. The ground was slick with blood and the walls were stained crimson. They decimated our numbers until only five remained, and two of those that hid were my sister and I.

"I knew I had to keep the chalice from them. If they took it, any other humans left in these caves wouldn't stand a chance. It was imperative, but I was stupid to think I could escape. They killed off the last few, and still they had not found their possession, and so they began to tear the caves apart, until they found where Alana and I hid. They all cornered us, came down upon us, and I did my best to defend us, but it was not enough. They got to Alana. They drove one of their jagged limbs through her, and I watched as she gargled up blood and the life drained from her eyes. I ran to her, held her tiny body in my arms, but it was not enough. They attacked me, stabbed at me, and I was nearly dead when they left me twitching on the ground to suffer to death, the chalice still in my possession. In their blind rage, they had forgotten about finding it and enjoyed the pleasure of murder too greatly.

"It was a man who found me. There were other humans in the hell, we just hadn't found them, but they had found us by our screams as they killed us. A man, their leader, found me. He had magyk of his own, a powerful man before we had fallen into the pits. He took the chalice from me, and took pity on me. He acknowledge by withholding the chalice, I had given a chance to everyone else in the cave. I wanted to die, but he decided to grant me a favor for the favor I had done for his people. He gave up his life to save mine, and I was healed, whole again, yet the most torn up I ever had been. I explained what had to be done with the chalice and then refused to speak. I sunk into a deep pit where I would only act to kill monsters. I'd hunt them at times, quite foolishly. People looked to me for help, but all I had to offer them was the skill to kill. That's all I was good for.

"There were other straggling groups of people we found, and for the survival of them all, they drank from the chalice. People lived and died. We struggled to move on, but we somehow managed to, until we found an opening that led out of the hell. We drafted an escape plan, one most would not survive, and they didn't. Roughly two hundred survived, and these survivors became what were known as Community, but we could not ever entirely escape the caves on the surface. Beast lurked and he was fiercer than any Master. He was unstoppable, immune to our magyk, until you. But we were so accustomed to the caves that few wanted to leave, and few wanted to see all that they had lost on the surface. And so we remained, a group of roughened survivors, who lived by a code of honor to do whatever it took to save each other because we were all that was left. We all that are left. But I left them, and I left my parents, and Alana. They're all gone now."

He shook his head, body quivering at the large story that had escaped from someone who was barely a man. "I'm all that's left." He gritted his teeth together as they clattered, chills wracking his body. He did not cry. He did not feel the urge to, did not feel sadness. He felt bitterness and hatred and death. Yet his body felt wrong and upset and he wanted to lash out and yell and scream.

He did just that as he leapt to his feet and shouted out a guttural cry at everything that screeched out inside of him at the unfairness of it all. He kicked at the wall, launched his magyk fused fire at it, scratched and punched at it. He screamed and he dug at the ground, and picked up the pieces. He threw the pieces far, watching them collide into a fragmented house in the distance. He fought until he was panting and covering in sweat and head had to stop to look up at the black sky, that stupid black sky that he needed so desperately to hold a sun or stars or something but in return gave him nothing. He yelled at the sky, cursed at it and the gods. He screamed until his throat cracked dry and his voice died, and then he collapsed to his knees and hung his head, exhausted and bruised.

Acacia approached him after he was done, after his tantrum was rung out, and she kneeled next to him, and put her arm across his shoulders, hand cupping his cheek and forcing him to turn his head to meet her eyes. Finally.

They were bright and clear and the closest thing to sunshine he would ever find.

"You may be all that's left, but you have me." She said, voice smooth and strong; steady.

His voice quivered. "Everyone always dies. Everyone but me."

"We all die at some point, Alias, don't worry. But right now you have me, and you forget that I'm daughter of the gods." She half-smiled. "I'm not going anywhere."

He watched her, body shaky and numb, trying to decide if he believed her or not. His mind was too enervated to process it anymore, and he turned his head to face out at the ruined village, letting it rest against hers, leaning against her under the black blanket of the sky.