Sebastian's legs had stopped working.

As soon as he, Imogen, and Remy entered the mansion, they gave out. He had collapsed onto the white floor, his entire body was rife with pain. More spots obscured his vision and he let out an agony-filled groan.

Remy and Imogen hoisted him from the floor. They draped his arms over their shoulders and lugged him along.

"We've got you," Remy told him as he strained to hold the older boy up.

Sebastian tried expressing his gratitude, but he couldn't make any noise apart from a few low groans. His words died in his throat, which kept constricting as if there was a boa coiled around it. Cold sweat coated his chalky skin. His eyes drooped; he could barely keep them open.

His time was almost up.

The poison was spreading. Fast. If it had already immobilized his legs, it wouldn't take long for it to attack his heart. Once it did, his body would begin to shut down completely. He grimaced at the thought. It would be a slow, painful death. He felt his eyes misting.

The thought of death didn't scare him. Well, not as much as he thought it would. He always knew his time would come eventually. Death always came. No one could escape it. Not his mother. Not those who died in the city. And certainly not him.

Death wasn't what he was afraid of.

He was afraid of failing. He had thought he was destined for something more. Ever since he was a child, he dreamt of being some revered hero, like Zoran Lumai—the first leader of the magicians—or his ancestor, Obscurin Tenebris—founder of the dark arts. When he learned of the Prophecy of Eight and started having those strange dreams when he was nine, he was sure he was destined for greatness.

He thought he was the one.

Now, he knew those dreams were nothing more than that; just dreams. Pathetic images put into his head as some sort of sick joke. His wasn't meant to become a hero. He was meant to die, scared and helpless in the palace of a burning city.

He dropped his head, his legs dragging behind him as his friends pulled him along.

"We need to get him downstairs," Imogen said breathlessly. "That's where Sirus and the others are."

Remy nodded and pushed a few curly strands of damp hair out his face. "Good idea."

Sebastian coughed and groaned. A burning hellfire spurred within his chest cavity. The silverbane was filtering through his veins like toxic ocean water.

His eyes widened as he thought of something.

Ocean water...

He thought back to his talk with Siren and Ajax on the beach the previous night. He felt the soft sand under his feet and sound of the waves crashing in his ears. At that moment, he would've given anything to be back there again.

The princess' words returned to him. An idea sparked inside his head.

"S-Siren," he croaked, his lips dried and chapped. "She...she can help."

Imogen furrowed her brow. "Help? Help how?"

"She's a healer. A prodigy, even." Remy's eyes lit up. "Sebby, you're a genius." He continued carrying Sebastian down the hall with a confused Imogen shooting different questions at him.

The corridor led the trio to a spiral staircase that led down into the basement. As they passed through the floor, the white walls shifted into dark stone with glowing, azure bricks interrupting the bleak pattern every now and then.

An eerie, blue light bathed the dark walls. Shadows wavered against the stone. Water dripped from the ceiling somewhere. The sound of heavy droplets hitting the ground echoed around them. Sebastian focused on the noise, as it was the only thing tethering him to reality.

He fought to stay awake. If he didn't, he feared he wouldn't fake up again.

His teeth dug into his bottom lip, the pain jolting him like a lightning strike. The faint, metallic taste of blood filled his mouth, but he was grateful for it. It distracted his brain from the agony terrorizing his body like the black acid rivers in Nordor.

"Where is everyone?" Remy asked.

Imogen gestured at a blue curtain at the end of the hall. Hushed voices came from beyond it. Sebastian recognized a few of them. He let out a sigh of relief.

"C'mon," Imogen urged. "We have to hurry."

They carried Sebastian through the curtain and into the room.

He lifted his head. The room had curved walls and a high ceiling. Constellations and blue tiles stared back at him. Twinkling stars decorated the bright paneling. A few chairs and couches, along with some wooden dressers, decorated the rest of the room.

"Oh my gods!" one of Siren's sisters exclaimed.

"What happened to him?" the other asked.

They rushed over to the newcomers, concern present on their bronze faces. Ajax, who had been speaking with Olivier and Sirus off to the side, jogged up to them and helped set Sebastian down onto a nearby sofa.

The black-haired magician let out a shaky breath, his face growing warmer and warmer by the second.

Everyone crowded around him asking a million different questions. He couldn't make out any of them. His world had been reduced to a blurry oil painting full of indistinguishable blobs and sounds.

Sirus joined the group and silenced them with a swipe of his hand. He looked to Remy and Imogen. "What happened?"

"We...we were trying to get back to the palace and we almost made it but..." She sniffled and wiped her eyes. "He got shot by something. An arrow. We think it was poisoned. I don't know what to do. He...he said Siren could help." She buried her face in her hands. "We lost Luka."

Ajax's face fell. "No..."

Dumbfounded, Olivier blinked a few times. "What?"

Sebastian nearly sobbed at the mention of Luka. The man had given up his life to save theirs. He squeezed his eyes shut. A few tears managed to escape. They cascaded down his cheeks and onto the couch.

Ariana, Sirus' oldest daughter, pulled back the leather jacket tied around his shoulder. She covered her mouth and turned her head. Black, vein-like lines emerged from the bleeding hole. The blood had begun to congeal. Sebastian stole a peek at it and nearly gagged.

"What the hell was in that arrow?" Ajax demanded.

Imogen shuddered. She was hyperventilating. She turned to Sirus. "We have to help him."

Sirus ran a hand through his hair. "It's silverbane." He cursed under his breath. "It's a rare poison found in Nordor. We don't have the materials to treat it."

Sebastian's heart stopped. He blinked a few times. Those were the last words he wanted to hear.

"There has to be something we can do," Remy insisted. "I mean, can't you check to see if you can heal him? Maybe you do have—"

Sirus shook his head. "We don't. The process of extracting silverbane is a tedious and difficult one. Even if we did have the ingredients, the poison has already spread too much. There's nothing we can do."

Ajax slammed his hand onto a table. Blowing air from his nose, he turned and stomped out of the room.

Sebastian shuddered, his eyes rolling into the back of his head. As he sunk into the depths of his own mind, something from the day before stood out to him:

"While many of my housemates use it as a weapon, some use it as a way to heal..."

Siren's words skipped across his mind like a smooth rock gliding against the surface of a pond. Ripples formed and an idea formed.

He opened his mouth and attempted to speak but couldn't. Coughing, he tried to force the words out.

"He's trying to say something," Geneva, Sirus' middle daughter, announced.

Everyone in the room stared at him as he tried to talk.

"Siren," he whispered. "Get Siren."

"Why is he asking for her?" Geneva asked.

Sirus nodded at the boy, a knowing look in his sapphire eyes. He turned to his wife, who had just entered the room. He frowned. "Where is Siren?"

"The maids didn't find her in her room."

"What are you saying?"

"We don't know where she is."

The words were condemning like the gavel of a judge. Siren had been his last—and only chance—at survival. And now she was nowhere to be found. He dug his nails into the sofa.

This can't be happening.

Everyone went silent as they watched his body begin to slowly shut down. Eventually, his muscles went lax. His mind began to freeze, his thought process slowing to a snail's pace. Soon, he wouldn't even be able to comprehend what his eyes were seeing.

At least the pain was fading.

He felt a hand on his cheek, lightly caressing it.

"I'm so sorry," Imogen whispered in his ear. She wrapped her arms around him and buried her face into the crook of his neck. "I'm so sorry."

He wanted to hug her back. He wanted to tell her everything would be okay. But he couldn't even move his arms. So, he just laid there with a blank expression on his face and pain in his eyes.

Black clouds filled his sight, growing darker with each passing moment.

In all honesty, he always thought he would have died a noble death. A death fitting for a great hero from some fantasy novel or something. Perhaps in a duel or fighting in battle. But no; he had been stopped by a poisoned arrow.

He almost wanted to laugh, as it sounded so stupid to him. He wondered what his tombstone would read—if he would even get one:

Here lies Sebastian Ordius Lazarus Thauvin, son of Thorian and Xandra, brother of Amora. He was killed by an arrow after betraying his family. His spirit will rot in the pits of Nordor for all of eternity.

Blinking a few more times, he took in the sight of blurry colors around him for a few seconds. His body went numb, tiny pinpricks scaling down his skin. He could hear people talking but it sounded like they were miles away from him.

A sigh escaped his pale lips.

He closed his eyes, allowing his consciousness to drift away.

Sebastian opened his eyes to darkness.

He was no longer in the room where Imogen and Remy had brought him to. He then released he wasn't even laying down. His body was suspended in a dark void with purple fire hiding in the depths of the chasm beneath him.

The sky above was the color of monster blood—dark and red. Even darker clouds lingered throughout the eerie expanse. Howls and screams sounded in the distance. He looked down and spotted jagged, black crystals jutting up from the ravine like the arms of the dead.

He gulped. He knew exactly where he was.

His heart sunk.

No one knew exactly what happened when someone died. It was theorized that their soul went straight down into the pits of Nordor or dropped into the acid rivers snaking through the black sand. But as for what happened after that, it was anyone's guess.

He had been in Nordor a few times, but only inside his father's castle. And even then, he hadn't spent much time there. His father once told him humans couldn't stay in the realm too long, or else they ran the risk of being stuck there for eternity.

Sebastian looked around again and tried moving. Though, it seemed like he was being held in place by invisible chains. He thrashed around but it didn't make a difference. He was still stuck.

Sighing, he hung his head and awaited his fate.

A low rumbling rose from under him. Within seconds, the noise had enveloped him like a blanket of darkness. Shadows swirled in front of him and the screams from the damned souls pierced his eardrums.

The darkness gathered together and formed a shape vaguely reminiscent of a head. Purple eyes crafted from the hellfire stared back at him. The face's menacing smirk, fit with snaggled teeth made from the black crystals below, sent chills down Sebastian's spine.

He froze. His mouth went dry and his heartbeat hiccupped.

The floating head was significantly bigger than he was. In fact, one of the eyes was about the same size as himself. The burning, purple eyes glared at him, eliciting his deepest, darkest fears. His entire body felt as if he'd been dumped into a pool of water from Antarctica.

"I told you we would be seeing each other soon."

Sebastian resisted the urge to cower from the demonic titan's visage.

It was Mauvorin, the god of death, chaos, and destruction.

"You are Thorian Thauvin's son," the deity noted, his massive head nodding.

Sebastian scowled. Through gritted teeth, he replied with an annoyed, "That's me."

"Have you come seeking knowledge as well?" Mauvorin inquired. "Perhaps you seek power instead."

The boy screwed his face at the god. "What? I didn't come here for anything. I'm pretty sure I..."

Realization crashed into him with the force of a speeding blasting spell. His throat tightened and the blood left his face. He was dead. That had to be it. Why else would he be speaking with the god of dead souls?

Oh no.

He let everyone down. Clenching his jaw, he dropped his head and glared at the bottomless pit beneath him.

"I'm dead, right?"

Mauvorin chuckled. "Dead? I wish. There hasn't been a soul like yours to grace my lands for quite some time." He laughed again. "If you were dead, you wouldn't be here. You'd be down there."

Sebastian narrowed his gaze at the deity.

Now he truly was confused.

"Wait, so if I'm not dead and you didn't bring me here yourself," he began, "then what the hell is going on?"

"I'm not sure," Mauvorin replied. "Perhaps you've been sent here to assist your father and I on our mission."

Our mission?

Sebastian didn't even know his father had spoken with the god. His eyes widened. This must've been how the man got the idea to collect all seven Eldenarian artifacts. Mauvorin had to have given him the idea.

He suddenly remembered his father's left eye, which possessed the fable mauvue charm. How could he have forgotten? Thorian and Mauvorin were more connected than he thought.

"You look surprised," Mauvorian said.

"I am," Sebastian said. "You mean to tell me you're trying to help my father with his quest."

"Yes...something like that."

"Well, that's not what I'm here for. I'm trying to stop my father...and you apparently."

The god sneered. "Then you must only be here for one reason."

Sebastian lifted an eyebrow. "Enlighten me then."  He was finding it surprisingly easy to speak to a being who helped create the world and everything in it. Then again, Mauvorin wasn't acting like how he expected him too.

He wondered what Makaela's experience with Lumi all those years ago was like. Apart from himself and his father, she was the only one to have made any contact with a god in centuries.

"Curse you, Lumi." Mauvorin grumbled something in an ancient language. "I'm being forced to show you something."

"Lumi? What're you—"

A tendril of black smoke reached from the god's face and touched his forehead. His vision cut out for a moment before returning.

He was no longer floating in Nordor.

He was standing on a balcony overlooking thousands of magicians—Eldairs and Solairs alike. The sky was a gleaming blue. The sun was warm against his bone-white skin. People in the crowd were smiling and waving at him. He glanced at his collarbone and noticed two gold clasps attached to the black attire he wore. A golden cape with dark trimming trailed behind him. He looked up and noticed the bottom of a crown sitting atop his head.

His breath hitched. He couldn't decide whether to be afraid or happy.

It was the prophecy. The King.

He began to smile.

Then, the image began to melt away. The cheers coming from the crowd below warped into screams and pain-filled cries. He reached out from them but that only further obscured the scene. He called out for someone, anyone. His heart raced and his chest felt like it was caving in.

"It seems like our time here is over," Mauvorin's voice said in his ear, though, it was growing farther away with every word spoken. "The time for your death has not come yet. Though, your fate will bring you to me again."

"What? What does that mean?" he exclaimed. "Wait! I still have questions. Wait!"

His questions fell on deaf ears. He was met with silence.

Light flared beyond his closed eyelids. His thoughts were returning to his groggy brain. The sounds of people saying his name began to fill his ears. 

Then he woke up.