Adam's POV
"Oh," was all I could say as I looked down to see the broken halves of Blake's weapon Gambol Shroud impaling me through my chest and back.

Blake and Yang pulled the weapon out of me and I stumbled forward. I could feel blood running down my torso as I sunk to my knees. I couldn't move, I couldn't speak, all I could do was slightly raise my head up toward the sky. If these really were to be my last moments in the living world I wanted the last thing I saw to be the sun.

Unable to hold myself up a moment more I pitched forward and fell off the cliff into the icy river below, hitting my arm on a rock as I did so.

I tried to kill the pain but only brought more. I lay dying and I'm pouring crimson regret and betrayal.

I felt the frigid water fill my ears, nose, and throat, choking out what I knew would be my final breath.

Only....it wasn't. I began feeling weightless and I slowly opened my eyes to find myself floating in an empty void filled only with darkness. But before I could wonder where the heck I was I heard a voice calling my name.

I turned toward the sound and froze. There only a few feet a way from me was Roquel Khan, my mother. Well, technically, adoptive mother but still I hadn't seen her since I was six years old...when she died. Now though calling her mother seemed strange. Considering she had died nearly twenty years ago the two of us now looked more like siblings.

Slowly, Roquel made her way over to me, her ghostly white tiger tail swishing behind her as she did so. She placed her hand on my left cheek and smiled that same warm smile that always seem to comfort me as a child.

"My sweet boy," she said softly, "look at you you're all grown up."

Strangely enough though instead of feeling happy to see her I felt angry, betrayed even. I pushed her hand away.

"What do you want?"

Roquel looked hurt, "Adam-"

"No!" I snapped, "leave me alone! You already did once remember? When you abandoned me?!"

Her eyes filled with tears, "Adam I'm sorry about that, really I am. I wanted to come back but I died before I could."

Roquel gently reached out for me again, "but I have been watching over you. I've seen what you've been through, what you've become."

"What do you mean 'what I've become?' I've become exactly who I was destined to be! A savior to my people!" I said proudly, "and why are you here anyway? If I'm dead aren't I supposed to cross over into the afterlife?"

My mother gave me a sad smile, "usually yes but I'm afraid you won't be coming to the afterlife."

Before I could ask what she meant I saw the floor beneath me open revealing a fiery pit. Skeletal hands began crawling out and they grabbed at my legs before dragging me downward. I tried to kick them away but more arms wrapped themselves around my torso and held my arms behind my back. I also felt a few hands cover my mouth in an attempt to smother me. What was the most terrifying though were the screams, at first I didn't understand what I was hearing but then I realized I was hearing the screams of the people I'd hurt throughout my life, the wails of pain from the lives I'd cut short.

My eyes widened in terror and I tried to break free but I couldn't, I felt powerless. The wounds on my chest began to burn horribly and I felt the brand over my eye blister as if I'd just received the mark.

I'm dying, praying, bleeding, and screaming. Am I too lost to be saved? Am I too lost?

But just as it seemed as if the fire would consume me everything stopped and I found myself on my knees shaking violently.

Roquel looked down at me, "still think you're who you were destined to become? Because I seriously doubt the 'savior to faunus kind' would've had to endure all of that."

I looked up at her, "w-what?"

She sighed and helped me up, "Adam who you became, the way you changed....that isn't the sweet boy I know."

"Of course not! Did you see what those humans did to me?!" I snapped, feeling angry that she would just expect me to let all I'd endured to roll off my back.

"Listen to me!" She yelled cutting me off, "you should be dead and yet you're not you're being given a second chance at life!"

"Good then I can use it to bring down judgement on all those who dare stand in the way of the faunus."

Roquel shook her head, "or you could use it to change. Become a better version of yourself, the person I knew you could always be."

I looked down at the ground, "I don't know. I'm not the same person you knew you said it yourself."

She sighed and kissed my forehead and I began to feel myself leaving the strange void, "well I hope you make the right choice. I'll be watching you Adam. Goodbye."

With that I felt the pain from my fight return and I was back on the river bank. Freezing cold, soaking wet, and bleeding, but alive.