The night screamed.
Flames clawed at the sky above Hidenheim, turning the mage-city's crystal spires into jagged torches. Screams tore through the streets — some human, some not. In the heart of the chaos, a boy ran.
His bare feet slapped against blood-slick cobblestones, heart hammering like a war drum. He didn't know his name. Didn't know why the world was burning. All he knew was the girl's hand gripping his wrist, dragging him forward.
"Liora!" he gasped, voice cracking.
"Keep running, Dot!" she snapped. Her silver hair glowed with swirling azure runes. "Don't look back!"
But he did.
Behind them, two-faced hounds bounded through the smoke — grotesque beasts with muzzles splitting into twin snarling jaws, eyes burning like molten gold. Their claws gouged furrows in the stone, leaving trails of black ichor.
Liora skidded to a halt in a ruined courtyard and shoved the boy behind her. "Stay down!"
The first hound lunged.
"Knýta!"
Her voice cracked like thunder. Invisible force exploded outward. The beast slammed into an invisible wall with a sickening crunch of bone. It crumpled mid-air, one face howling, the other twitching in death.
The second hound vaulted over its packmate, jaws wide enough to swallow a man's head.
Liora spun her staff. A shimmering blue barrier flared to life. The hound crashed into it. Fangs scraped against magic with a teeth-grinding screech. Sparks flew. The barrier held… but it flickered.
"Get ready to run again," she hissed, sweat beading on her brow.
Dot's hands trembled as he clutched the edge of her dress. Everything felt wrong. Fragments of memory flickered — warm hands, soft laughter — then shattered. Who was he? Why did these monsters want him dead?
The hound smashed its full weight against the barrier. Cracks spiderwebbed across the blue light.
Liora swore and shoved Dot behind a collapsed pillar. "Hide!"
The barrier shattered in a burst of azure shards. The hound barreled through, claws raking across Liora's side. Blood sprayed hot across the boy's face.
Liora didn't falter. She swung her staff like a club, cracking it against the hound's skull with a wet thud. The beast staggered. She followed with a point-blank blast — "Knýta!" — hurling it into a burning wall. Bricks exploded outward.
Dot stared at the crimson staining her side, chest tightening. "Liora… you're hurt. I'm sorry—"
"It's nothing." She tore a strip from her dress and bound the wound, wincing. "We can't stop. Come on, Dot. Move!"
They ran again.
"Why are you stopping?!" Dot shouted. "That thing is coming!"
Liora skidded to a halt at the realm's edge barrier, breathing hard. "This is the end of Hidenheim. We need to break through — now! Stay behind me."
Behind them, the ground exploded upward in dirt and stone.
The monstrous demon rose like a nightmare given flesh — four red eyes burning with fury, twisted face splitting into a horrifying grin as it stared straight at Dot.
For a heartbeat, silence fell amid the roar of flames.
Dot turned to Liora, fear choking his throat. "Liora—"
Time slowed.
Memories crashed over him like a broken dam.
He remembered waking in a narrow cot, gasping from a nightmare of blood and a silent scream. A scarred man named Dren looming over him. "You're in Hidenheim, kid. The hidden realm of mages."
Weeks of hiding in ancient halls while mages called him "demon spawn" and "filth." The slap that echoed down the corridor. Liora bursting in like a storm, dragging him away.
Later, sitting together with an old book, her eyes sparkling: "I'm going to become a great mage — respected across every realm."
He had clapped. "That's amazing!"
She had given him a name when he had none. "From now on, you're Dot the Risen. Second chances don't come for no reason, Dot. So live — like it matters."
She had believed in him when no one else did.
The memories snapped away.
The demon charged.
"Liora, run!" Dot shouted, stepping forward. "Leave me—"
"No." Tears streamed down her face. "If I can't even save you… how can I ever become a great mage? I can't let my friend die."
Power surged through her. A glowing half-moon mark appeared on her forehead. She chanted.
In an instant, they switched places. Dot tumbled safely to the ground. Liora stood in the demon's grasp.
Claws pierced her chest. Blood poured from her mouth. The mark faded.
She looked at Dot and mouthed, barely audible: "Thank you… Dot."
Her body crumpled.
Dot wailed.
From a distance, a mysterious man paused, eyes narrowing in fascination.
A woman's voice sounded beside him. "Master."
"Wait for me."
Rage ignited in Dot. His eyes flared crimson. Claws extended from his fingertips.
The demon lunged.
The hooded man vanished and reappeared between them. "Wait, you filth."
Dot looked up. The man pulled back his hood, revealing a sharp, ordinary face marred by one jagged scar across the cheek.
"Who are you?!" Dot shouted.
"Lots of potential… yet she wasted it on cheap sentiment."
Flashes assaulted Dot — Liora smiling, then her lifeless body.
Dot roared. "Who the hell are you?!"
The demon lunged anyway. The man touched its hide. It exploded in black ichor.
"Filth."
He turned to Dot. "You're weak, allowing her to sacrifice herself when you have the means to end the demon."
Dot — now fully demonic, claws out — lunged.
The man vanished, reappeared behind him, and sliced clean through. Dot screamed.
"I'm going to kill you," Dot snarled, eyes blazing with infernal fury.
The man only smiled.
He vanished again, returning to the woman's side.
"Should I take him?"
"No. Leave him. Now he serves no use."
"Break it," the man said coldly.
The woman raised her fingers. Blasts of fire rained down, shattering the anchors holding the realm together.
They disappeared.
The pocket realm began to collapse. Stones rained down.
Dot crawled through the shuddering halls toward Liora's body, ribs screaming with every breath. He reached for her cold hand as the last flashes of her kindness burned in his mind.
In the human realm of Valdheim, outside a quiet town, a farmer looked up as the sky tore open.
The mage castle plummeted through the rift — towers, walls, everything — crashing into the earth in a thunderous avalanche of stone and dust.
Dot fell with Liora's body. Rubble buried them both.
Minutes later, hoofbeats approached.
A man leaped from his horse, knelt in the wreckage, and gently lifted Dot's broken, slowly regenerating form. Flesh was already knitting itself back together.
He wrapped the boy in a cloak, mounted, and rode into the distance.
As the stranger carried him away, Dot's half-lidded eyes burned with faint crimson light.
Liora… I won't waste this. I'll find him and kill him.
Dot's journey is just beginning...