Pain. Terrible pain. Micah couldn't remember ever experiencing this excruciating level of suffering in his entire life.

It stole everything from him. All of his senses shattered into nothingness. This should be death. But his heart pounded and painful breaths escaped him.

The Dragon Slayer had done its job. But Micah hadn't been able to see the distraction. All power died from their craft, and it plummeted.

Micah was going to die that day. He always expected as much. Die on the bleak planet, far away from the stars.

Far away from his family.

He didn't expect to take Hannah with him. Her fear screamed at him. The calm, rebellious genius feared death.

But she wasn't alone in the fear.

As soon as the weapon activated, horror assaulted Micah. An army of pain, tearing apart existence itself. Killing creatures older than Micah could fathom.

Their world flashed through his mind, a world of magic and myth. Something that couldn't be real. Not like the evil creatures who swooped down from the stars, taking the lives of everything Micah loved.

Taking the life of his brother.

He didn't want to feel sympathy for them. It sickened him. But tears burned his eyes as he sampled the feast of agony.

Micah should have been dead. At this point, the craft around him had burned into nothingness. Ash to fall upon the ground, adorning the crimson remnants of ancient creatures. But something held onto him. It shielded him, a cold embrace keeping nonexistence at bay.

Hannah rested in his arms. He couldn't tell if she was dead or alive. Her eyes shut, and her body limp. Some part of his rational mind screamed that she was only suffering psionic shock. Death hadn't taken her yet. The psionic barrier kept them safe from the weapon.

But not without a cost. Agony cascaded through Micah like a hellish waterfall. He couldn't stop the fearsome flow. If he even tried, Hannah's life would be swept away from him.

Someone help. Please help. I'll die, but not her...

He didn't expect anything at all. A prayer to the unforgiving cosmos. Soon he would be nothing but dust. They would expunge his name from all records, and only his sister would remember him. And she would never be free again to speak his name.

If she wasn't forced to join him in death.

Just when he couldn't hold on for a moment longer, a dark blur rushed at him. He couldn't make sense of it and didn't have the energy to make sense of it. All he could do was make sure that Hannah wouldn't fall.

Something grabbed onto him. Not quite him, but the psionic barrier around him. It almost felt like claws digging into his very soul.

Not that he believed in souls.

The pain was nothing compared to the weapon. And this pain held the promise of life. The kind of suffering someone had to endure to get through another day. Micah might have let go, but he couldn't let go of Hannah.

Everything whirled as a force flung them toward a hole in the cliffs. The psionic barrier keeping them from all damage finally dispersed just as they hit the rough ground.

Distant sounds of destruction echoed, but an eerie silence hung over the cavern. Micah laid there, trying to get his senses back. A fierce gust brushed over him and a loud thud as something landed. Too cool to be a craft.

Fear kept Micah in a crouched position. Part of him just wanted to stay there, go to sleep and wake up in his childhood home.

But his concern for Hannah overrode everything else. He pushed himself into a kneeling position and crawled over to her. Her body laid on the ground, curls hiding her face. He pushed them back, half-afraid to feel a cold corpse.

Warmth lingered in her flesh, and soft breaths tickled his skin. Alive, but there was no telling the kind of damage done. Metaphysical damage could be impossible to gauge. Medical research couldn't make sense of how some people were affected. Micah's sister had clearly been affected, but there was no fixing her.

Micah didn't want Hannah to end up like her. But at that moment, only thankfulness filled him. Thankfulness that Hannah still lived. He threw his arms around her, no longer fearing to share his feelings.

He stiffened as the wind whistled. Except the wind wasn't whistling, it just sounded that way. This was a breath. A loud, powerful breath.

A sense of being watched fell over Micah. All his life, he was used to being watched. People were watched for their own good. So the government could protect everyone. It had been that way as long as Micah could remember.

But it meant that Micah always knew when he was being watched and when no eyes were present, digital or otherwise. And he was scorched by the burning sensation of being watched.

Micah swallowed, slowly turning to face the creatures.

Unblinking eyes stared upon him. Micah's throat tightened. After believing the creatures were monsters for so long, the utter beauty of the eyes stunned him. Tinges of violet merged with breathtaking blue. It brought to mind a nebula, the beauty of the universe.

Micah shook away the mesmerizing quality of the eyes. It didn't matter if the eyes offered welcome. This was one of the creatures who killed so many people.

Then why did it save me?

Rational thought took over. It saved Micah and Hannah for its own reasons. Probably to eat them. Or, if they had any level of sentience, it was planning to inflict some sort of hellish revenge on them.

Micah grasped the cave walls, pushing himself up. His legs shook, weak from the energy channeled from his body. Too much energy.

He should be dead.

Expecting fire to scorch him into nothingness, it shocked him as nothing happened. The creature just continued to watch him. Only a cool breath tickled Micah.

He reached for Hannah, pulling her up. She weighed his weakened body down, but he gritted his teeth and slowly backed toward the exit of the cave.

But his heart dropped when he reached the exit. Too far from the surface. They would never survive the fall.

And no one would ever come looking for them. Nobody should have survived the range of the Dragon Slayer.

Micah and Hannah would be assumed dead.

He set her down, as gentle as he could manage and met the nebula eyes again. It didn't make sense that the eyes offered more comfort than fear. Something was wrong. The creature was affecting him in some strange way.

Taking a deep breath, Micah held up his hands. "All right. I'm at your mercy. You can kill me if you want. Revenge, I guess."

Nothing. The practically mystical eyes just stared at him.

"But not Hannah," Micah said. "You saved us both, didn't you? I guess maybe...maybe you want to eat us? Or get your revenge. I understand. But not her. She wasn't involved."

He hoped the creature couldn't sense lies. The government always seemed to know when he lied.

"This was all me," Micah said. "I...I'm the reason that you're brethren are dead."

The pain of their deaths echoed in Micah. He couldn't stand it. It didn't make death feel like a welcoming death, it made Micah even more terrified of experiencing that pain.

But he feared more for Hannah.

"That's right," Micah said as the creature kept its otherworldly eyes upon him. "It was me. Not her. I forced her to come with me. So...so please spare her. You can do what you want. Burn me to ash. Feast on me. Freeze me and shatter me into pieces. It doesn't matter."

It mattered. Terror choked him, and he couldn't help backing up a little.

But he didn't back away.

"So take me," Micah said. "Just not her."

He got down on his knees, hoping the universal signal for surrender would transcend the barrier between them. But maybe the creature didn't understand a thing that he was saying.

Somehow Micah doubted it. There was too much wisdom in those uncanny eyes.

"Please!" Micah tried again. "What else do you want from me? I can't...I can't do anything else."

The dragon―creature, it was a creature―shifted. Micah caught a glimpse of scarlet soaked scales. The creature suffered injuries from the attack.

Another reason to hate Micah.

"You're hurt," Micah whispered.

He took a step forward, wobbling slightly from fear. Then another. Soon he was next to the creature. He knelt and reached a shaky hand to touch the wound. It didn't make any sense, the rational part of him knew it was insane to touch a wound of a creature of unknown origins.

A stronger part of him couldn't fight the compulsion to touch. Pain rocked him upon contact, but he didn't let go. Instead, trickles of energy poured from him. His soul felt like it was being drained.

But he couldn't pull away. The burning pain rushed into him, pulling him down into darkness.

Lost in the stars. Traveling to worlds stained by smog. Searching for something important. A key that couldn't be lost.

A jolt ran through Micah, and his eyes flew open. A mystical stare greeted him. The creature craned its head down, looking right at him.

Micah scrambled back, slumping against the cavern wall. One quick glance showed that Hannah was in the same position where he left her. The dragon could have easily torn her apart.

Dragon. He was thinking of it as a dragon now. But he couldn't shake the thought from his head. He could no longer rationalize the truth away.

"Why didn't you kill me?" Micah croaked.

No answer. He didn't know what he expected.

The dragon moved forward, its wound now utterly gone. As if the creature had been untouched by the attack.

"Did you heal yourself?"

"No."

Micah tried to steady himself as a voice shook his very soul. The voice should scare Micah.

But it welcomed him as much as the eyes.

"You can talk?" Micah asked.

Although talking seemed to be a paltry way of describing what Micah heard. If there was a language of the soul, that was what the dragon spoke.

No answer.

Micah clasped his hands together, trying to summon his courage. "You can understand me?"

Nothing.

"I think...shit, I think I made a mistake," Micah said, unable to stop the words tumbling from him. "Something's wrong with me. Since I used the weapon. I'm feeling things I shouldn't be feeling and I think I'm healing things and..."

He trailed off, hugging himself in misery. Activating the Dragon Slayer had done something to him. When everything died around him, something had been awakened in him. And he just wanted to shut it off.

"You probably don't even understand me," he muttered.

"I understand..."