“Well, we’re here! Now what? Ugh, it’s so fucking cold…”

“Azra, I do not hear any whispers or cries… The ambiguity of this quest irritates me… I also disdain the absurdly low temperature up here.”

They were only a few hundred meters above sea level, since the mountain that they found wasn’t that tall or steep. There were huge ones in the northern distance, but there was no way for them to make it that far in such intense darkness.

The only reason that they were able to see at all, was because the mana-barrier surrounding the planet would occasionally release a dim blue light. There would also be a sudden, but short-lived burst of warm air. The pulses were becoming much slower now that they reached the mountaintop though.

“Michael…” A faint, almost inaudible voice murmured into Azra’s left ear.

“Oh shit! Did you hear that?” However, when he looked around, Yuri was laying face-down in the snow.

“Michael, you can’t do this… It’s wrong!” The voice started as a whisper, but transformed into a woman’s deafening scream.

“Elly, we don’t have a choice. This is our job. Now stop freaking the fuck out, okay?” A man’s voice echoed through Azra’s mind and he couldn’t help but have flashes of memories.

Then he muttered “Destiny… Fate… Fortune… Mom, Dad… No, what the hell?” However, he quickly lost consciousness, drifting off into a long and terrifying nightmare.

In the dream, he was on a ship, along with his wife… Uriel. They had figured out a way to travel faster than the speed of light by entering a true void. Even if it didn’t seem like they were moving quickly from their perspective, it was possible to exit a universe for only a moment and end up in an entirely different solar system when they reentered.

Yuri on the other hand, she was dreaming of something totally different. She was a strange plant-like organism, which had bark for flesh and needed to utilize hydrokinesis to simply move. The dryad wandered a strange world for eons, attempting to help the people she came across. Yet, no matter what she did, it always ended in calamity. There was always something missing… Someone missing.

“Ailyn…” When she opened her teary eyes, she was laying on her back and gazing up into the starlit sky. Horrible moans and groans surrounded her in every direction. She glanced around and noticed that there was a horde of people who seemed to be suffering from leprosy, combined with rabies. Many of them had festering wounds and missing limbs. Almost all of those wretched souls were cursed with a broken immortality. They could never die, because their master would constantly keep them just barely alive.

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