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How many weeks, how many months had passed... since she last heard those words resound? The early days of winter’s arrival, and winter’s stay... she thought back to that peculiar human’s parting words – here, now – it was the only thing in her mind that would actually echo.

The cold burned her – the falling snow like flames scalding more the raw red of her skin.

She screamed, roared, and heard herself resound nothing.

Grey smoke swirled the skies, obstructing the infinite stars from shining their luster. It burnt to breathe and the chaos around her plummeted burning trees in the haze, each reverberating thud quaking the earth like a malicious echo flailing her pounding brain. She could hear the crackle, the snap of their branches, the rest of its splintered roots catching fire, and those words once more, again, and again...

‘Someday’

It wasn’t today, it wasn’t tonight...

.....

She could feel the coating warmth from her blood had spilled across her skin, from wounds still afresh and searing, cuts, gashes, from somewhere, something, slicing through her clothes, skewering her arms, her legs... something heavy...

Still too heavy.

Her eyes fluttered open only to see a miasma of ash and the distinct stark red of burning haze hovering the sky-less heavens above her. Pain rippled and pulsated across her entire body, she couldn’t move a single inch, and was struggling desperately for the air that continued scorching at her throat.

What happened? What did this?

She remembered laying to rest for the season, holding close to her sister, she remembered the heaviness in her eyes slowly pulling at her eyelids, she remembered the view from out their burrow hole, remembering catching the first few drops of winter blanketing the warm colors of autumn before slumber eventually took hold.

Then – an explosion, a mighty tremble, an ungodly choir of stretching wails from the unknown, and then... and then... she was here... she was here stirring... she was here struggling... squirming... recalling...

The raging blaze continued to swelter and burn, the pungent taste of iron began to envelop the insides of her mouth, a taste she tried to spit, only to retch, a cascade of red rapidly spilling down her chin.

From the initial eruption, she remembered waking – her instincts already taking immediate control, quickly rousing her sister from her slumber before scouring the freezing, frigid outside for the source of the disturbance.

What she saw, what she recalled seeing... the skies engulfed in fire, in large bright showers, it was as if the very heavens were crashing down onto the earth – she glimpsed the scales of heaven’s wings, she heard the sonorous cry of heaven’s roar, she felt the heavy impact, the debilitating shockwave blowing them both back, as a piece of heaven landed in a giant crater in front of them.

After that, she recalled... running.

Just running.

Keep running.

“REAN, LENORA!” She remembered shouting, heaving, before hauling your sister atop her arms, streaking through ruined meadows, vaulting collapsing trees, and desperately retaining her balance as the very earth continued to shake beneath her feet as the sky rained more with heavenly fire. “NI’HIM, GLIN!”

A sharp branch sliced her arm, and a rough landing on a jagged surface pierced her ankles – she kept running, searching for an escape, but it seemed the entire outland was surrounded in the same blazing ring of fire, never once getting any further away from the petrifying roars resonating from everywhere.

And then, finally...

“ESHWLYN!”

The sky grew blinding, the flames, the roars, descended upon them, she threw her arms, felt the weight from them lift away, she remembered shouting her last, remembering telling, yelling... never finishing...

Then the darkness, the gray smoke, the burning snow.

Eshwlyn slowly felt her hands around the crushing pressure pinning in her place, feeling stones, scales, and flesh as one – leaning over her blurring vision to see four mighty limbs stemming from an enormous horned creature laying lifeless atop of her, accompanied by a pair of sleek angular wings, chipped and grotesquely crooked on one side in the dirt, and with every part of its body gleaming and protruding almost like crystals.

It was one of these sharp protrusions that kept her rooted deep in the snow... feeling a little more... and ultimately finding a chunk of its spine impaling her abdomen into the earth.

That was the pain, that was the bleeding... the heaviness she was feeling...

Lifting the beast was beyond even her capabilities, especially not with her strength already steadily leaving her in the form of a deepening red soaking the snow... the prospect of freeing herself... gradually becoming an impossibility.

But she had to try. She must not die.

“L...Lenora...” Eshwlyn wheezed, breathed, her breath turning to strength. “Kes’te...”

Before the abrupt darkness, she told her to keep running, to keep on going, to sprint, and never stop. Someone has to tell her to stop... someone has to tell her it was okay to stop running.

She needed to.

Her hands felt around again until she felt the embedded chunk fastened around her clutches. She knew better than to try wrenching it loose from herself – after all, she had taught better long before. When it came to injuries such as this, that human’s lesson echoed back at her, it was better to leave it sealed until a focused treatment can be attained.

So, gripping, squeezing, and screaming with all her might, Eshwlyn managed to snap the chunk out from the creature’s own spine, and at once feeling the slightest movement, began wriggling and pulling her body out from the beast’s crushing mass.

The effort alone usurped her temporarily of life, and she found herself collapsing back against the snow, leaving stark outlines of crimson with every stumbling sway – yet she mustn’t fall, she cannot fall.

Coughing, and retching out the rancid, ember-filled air, Eshwlyn drew out her sword within a bloodied, quivering hold, and through a thick fog of blinding flames and with the earth still quaking beneath her, set her reeling sights a desperate lead forward, hoping for, shouting for...

“LENORA!”

Where she could be? Where could she possibly have gone? How long already has it been since she last saw her? And how long more will this nightmare continue?

Her panic kept growing by the moment, finding no clues, no trails, forced into an aimless wander in the fiery darkness of pandemonium, and she wasn’t alone, blind, and in total disarray – the wildlife had scattered everywhere, and she could feel them brush past her, breezing in flutters, and in cases of violet stampedes, she only always manage to barely weave past.

Even healthy, this situation would have been a struggle for her to traverse. Lenora... Lenora wouldn’t be capable of...

But she’s smart, she’s diligent... Lenora’s different, much different... surely, she’ll still be alright... surely... she’ll...

“VUL!” She cursed, and stumbled again after a while, making only the slightest of progress forward, the pain in her abdomen flaring to indescribable heights with every twitch of a muscle. “VU... LU!

Everything pulled her down, every part of her told her to rest. This blizzarding winter, this grievous wound, her very own nature – begged for rest. But she wouldn’t.

Eshwlyn continued to stumble and stumble, a haphazard streak of deep red following in her wake, amidst the chaos and scorching fog, she kept yelling for her sister, heaving deep the putrid air for her scent to no avail... all the while the question, the demand, kept unraveling her focus for an answer.

What caused this?

It was a pointless ponder. Right then, it didn’t mean anything to find an answer. All that mattered was finding Lenora, wherever she could be in this accursed night of terror.

Then, inadvertently, she happened to stumble upon her answer... lifting a slanting, smoldering branch over her head, and accidentally slipping and falling into a large crater where another enormous winged beast laid dead upon impact.

As she agonizingly rose to her feet once more – she saw it. A disfigured, ruptured mass of organs and blood, a crimson pool crushed beneath one of the creature’s six limbs – an unfortunate victim just as she would have been.

Except... It was no animal, no creature that she was familiar with seeing among these plains. In fact, it wasn’t an animal at all.

There were too many glaring discrepancies, infuriating signs... as well as the most awful smell permeating the air...

“Hu...man...” Eshwlyn breathlessly said, a taste of pure, unbridled fear tinging her tongue.

She felt herself reach forward towards the mutilated carcass, her eyes unblinking, her breathing stalling, as she pulled near her, swaying loosely atop her quivering fingers a surviving piece of the human’s clothing.

A large, loose... fluttering red hood.

Once again, she heard that familiar set of words resound out loud. Since she first heard it at the beginning, first recalled it in the middle, and now... like a foreboding omen, at the end.

‘Forgive us’