"Damien!"

  "Mom?!"

  "Damien! Keilan!! Run!!!"

  "Mom, where are you?!"

  Damien pushed through the crowd of fleeing, faceless people, coughing at the smoke filled air and the red that overwhelmed the atmosphere.

  Unable to endure the smoke any longer, he brought up his arm to his face in an attempt to block it off. It didn't work. He coughed till his eyes became blurry and his head woozy.

  "Damien, run away!!"

  "Mom!" Damien called out, voice laced with panic. "Where are you?! I can't find you!"

  "Don't bother! Take your brother and run!"

  "Listen to your mother, Damien!" Elas' voice came in then, soft but infused with that rare tone of authority he seldom used. "Take your brother and leave!"

  But Damien wouldn't listen, so he continued pushing through the crowd of panicked, fleeing citizens.

  "Damien!" Elas' voice came in again, laced with a touch of anger and disappointment. "Don't you dare come any closer!"

  But it was already late. Damien broke through the flood and emerged out into the other side. He didn't have to go far before his family came into view.

  Elas stood, hair matted with sweat and chest rising in a sign of heavy breathing. He was holding steady a leaning Mara, whose eyes fluttered as she struggled to stay awake. They were both coughing profusely and water dribbled down their eyes.

  "I can't find Keila..." Damien's voice trailed off as he looked down on the ground where a body was laid at the feet of both his parents.

  "No, no, no!" Damien rushed forward but was stopped as a firm hand wrapped around his body. "Leave me!"

  "Calm, boy," a soothing voice said from behind. "Don't look at her. You don't want your last memory of her to be like this."

  Damien looked back to see an unfamiliar face. The middle-aged man stared at him with sorrow, but Damien wasn't feeling it.

  "Unhand me!" He roared and struggled, and then began pushing. Damien pushed and pushed, but no matter how much he tried, he couldn't seem to shake the man off.

  Eventually, grief made landfall and he sagged. Damien sobbed and sobbed. His vision blurred as tears dripped down his eyes in rivers.

  Suddenly, someone barged through the crowd, pushing through in a run. Healer Salem, old as she was, moved with speed belaying her withered-looking appearance. But Damien wasn't paying attention to that. He was staring at the body in her arms.

  A loud cry ripped through his throat as he stared at the unseeing eyes of his brother, who dangled in the arms of the old woman with zero sign of consciousness.

  "Found him trampled a few blocks away," the old woman said as she brought Keilan down on their parents' feet alongside Leira's.

  Damien couldn't breathe; his voice had left him. He heaved and heaved, chest rising and falling with brutal intensity. He couldn't see well."

  "It's all your fault," someone whispered, and Damien's head rose sharply.

  Mara pushed away the steadying arms of Elas, staggering forward.

  "It's all your fault!" she said louder this time."

  Damien couldn't comprehend. He just stared at the woman, speechless.

  Taking his silence for indifference, Mara screamed. "It's all your fault! We should have never taken you in!! My children are all dead because of you!"

  "But—" Damien tried, looking past the grieving woman towards Elas, but what he saw there wasn't sympathy. The man glared at him with undisguised hate. He said nothing, but he didn't need to. The words were written clearly on his face.

  The animosity from his parents, his adopted parents, burned, so Damien turned pleading eyes toward Salem. Surely, the healer would see that this wasn't his fault—

  But when he turned, he found no warmth in the woman's eyes. She stared at him with barely contained disgust, and disappointment.

  Damien flinched back and looked down. There was no longer anyone holding him.

  "You should have been left to die in that JUNGLE!!"

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  Chest heaving, Damien staggered back like he'd been slapped. He looked down at both his siblings—

  "Don't look at them, you abomination! You don't deserve to look at them!"

  Tears welled up in his eyes again, and he looked up to meet the eyes of Mara. In it, he saw grief, loss, and anger. But it was the hate that stabbed deeper into his heart.

  And then he saw it.

  Standing to the side and a short distance from it all, was an ant. Damien frowned. He recognized that ant. He didn't know where, but he was sure he did.

  The creature cocked its head to the side, and then everything went dark.

  "Damien!"

  "Mom?!"

  "Damien! Keilan! Run!"

  "Mom, where are you?!"

  "Don't worry about us, son!" Elas called back. "You and your brother should leave this place! We'll come find you!"

  But Damien didn't believe it, so he began pushing through the stampeding humans.

  "It's all your fault!"

  "Ungrateful!"

  "You caused all this!"

  "My children are dead because of you!"

  "I should have sent you back out there to die!"

  "Don't you dare lay your ungrateful eyes on them!"

  Over and over, the same scene played out, and Damien argued every time. His heart tore, broke, shattered, and was flung all over the place, but still, he argued.

  Grief stole his voice as he looked down at the unseeing eyes of his siblings. Water blurred his eyes and the air left his lungs.

  Through it all, Damien kept seeing the same ant all over again. Again and again. Whenever he noticed it, his vision went black.

  At first, Damien didn't notice it. But gradually, over every rewind, clarity came to him and he saw this place for what it really was.

  A charade.

  Unreal.

  A dreamscape.

  Like a wet blanket, cold rage settled over him.

  He had been defiled...

  By an insect.

  The audacity.

  The gall.

  Damien turned to look where the ant was standing, staring at him with its head cocked.

  No more.

  "You will regret this."

  He cocked back his arm, and punched. The world shattered into glass.

  Keilan stared at the two giant scorpions assembled before him, with glowing purple eyes staring right back at him.

  "You made a grave mistake."

  Rage flooded his mind, uncontained rage. At the tip of his tongue was his ascended technique, but he held himself back at the last second. Calling his ascended technique would plunge him into the same fate as the two critters in front of him.

  Rage-fueled focus pushed his mind against the ambient will saturating this place. He didn't care what some unknown being said he could and could not will. A line had been crossed, and blood would spill.

  For miles, the wind roiled and toiled as Keilan laid his mental fingers on them.

  This time, he didn't need finesse. No, what he needed was power. Blunt, crushing power.

  The wind swirled around him until it had formed into the shadow of an armor vaguely resembling a smaller version of his titanic construct.

  Keilan felt himself encased in a mountain of power, all compacted into an eight-foot construct.

  He moved, zipping so fast the world slowed to a crawl.

  The scorpions were still staring at the place he'd been when Keilan arrived before them.

  He punched.

  And for the first time in a while, he felt the world tremble.

  Damien didn't run, he simply walked.

  When the ant queen began firing spikes from her abdomen, he walked.

  When she screeched, sending out waves of sound energy that picked up the ground around him, he walked.

  With his intent, he willed space into submission, barely noticing the pushback of the other great element. Damien didn't care.

  The spikes halted in mid-air, perfectly stable. Damien felt the will of the ant try to wrest back control of her weapons. He shoved it off.

  He will again, and the essence of destruction bore down like a pride of hungry lions on the essence of sound, shredding it into pieces.

  Reality warped and Damien suddenly appeared before the ant. It barely had any time to react before he punched it on the face. Hard.

  His spear hovered behind him. He didn't need it for this. This was personal and required a very personal approach.

  Damien tore out the first wing of the creature, ignoring the warbling screech it sent his way. The sound attack never reached him.

  He tore out the second one, and then backhanded the creature when it turned to take a bite out of him. One of its pincers shattered onto the ground.

  Damien didn't want a quick death. No, he wanted the ant to suffer. So he went to work.

  He tore out one of its legs with a squelch and then moved back to its face. Damien dodged as the ant tried to take another bite out of him and then plunged the leg into its right eye.

  This time, he felt it within his bones as the ant screeched. Not in anger, but in pain.

  Good, they were still a short way off of actual agony.

  He pulled off another leg and then jammed it into the joint of another leg, shutting off its path to the escape.

  This was just the beginning.

  Keilan breathed heavily as he stared down at the bodies of the dead scorpions. He didn't know what to think about, what to do. At first, rage had led him, but now that the reason for that rage was gone, he found himself empty.

  His breath hitched, and unable to hold back any longer, he sat down on the ground and cried.

  When the battered, broken corpse of the ant queen lay at his feet, Damien heaved in a deep breath. It wasn't time yet.

  Slowly, he turned around to look at a seemingly empty area. Damien didn't say anything, but his observers must have felt his gaze because slowly, they prowled out of the mist.

  Damien stared at the giant pack of wolves, fifteen feet tall, all wrapped in purple ethereal fur.

  "If you think to take advantage of me," Damien said with a look at the dead ant at his side. "Think again."

  Slowly, a wolf prowled out from the midst of the pack. This one was larger, somewhat close to twenty feet. It had a streak of black down its back, unlike the fully purpled ones.

  "Human," it said into his mind, and Damien had to take a deep breath to keep himself from lashing out. He reminded himself that the wolf likely had no other way to communicate.

  "The hunt will not bother you," the peak tier Spirit lord said. "We have perceived your hunt for blood, and we will have no part in it."

  Damien stared at the wolf for a few seconds, and then he nodded. A question cropped up in his mind about why a wolf was in a space said to only be filled with insects, but Damien crushed that thought.

  The wolf's crimson eyes flashed, and the shadow of a smile appeared on Damien's face.

  "Thank you," he said.

  The wolf bobbed its head, turned around to growl at the others behind it, and then with staggering speed that left blurs behind, they disappeared.

  Damien looked to the sky, at least what counted for the sky in this shit hole. He took a deep breath and choked out a sob, and then he crashed down onto the ground with his knees pulled together, and cried.