Through the storm-light, shadows crawled across the shrine's cracked threshold. They took shape, with mist sculpting itself into forms.
Two silhouettes was blurred yet agonizingly familiar but it stood at the edge of the lightning fissures. "Mother…?" The word slipped out before he could stop it. Immediately the shrine fell away.
He was no longer Kelvin the Crest's tamer, no longer the bearer of Xerion's flame or wielder of relics. The stone pillar at his back became dissolved. The storm's howled a roar that collapsed into a single, deafening sound that shrieks, roars and the snapping of bone.
His fingers didn't grip steel but a splintered wooden practice sword. His knees was knocked together. His voice was cracked as he begged two blurred shapes of his parents to flee. "Please, please, we have to go! They are coming! Run!" He pleaded.
