UNITY

Chase was walking across a small path near the center of the town. He limped and limped, passing fallen men, women, and even children. The scenes the boy had passed by made him wish that decapitation had been the swift way of death for all the people he had seen on the way to the Northwestern pathway.

Chase took several breaths so that he could calm himself.

It was all so sudden, as well as extremely confusing for the young boy. He was scared, alone, and in terrible pain.

He wanted to go off and find his father, he wanted to see his friends, and he wanted this nightmare to just end already.

However, the home he once had could not be saved anymore.

Chase took shaky steps as he slowly limped forward on a long dirt pathway that surrounded the town hall of Willowmere.

As he proceeded, loud screams of agony could be heard from the nearby houses.

The boy noticed that they sounded like an elderly woman's yells and pleas for help.

Chase trembled as he covered his ears. The weight of his backpack was slowly crushing the boy's injured upper back.

He ground his teeth and continued to push forward.

After what felt like around thirty minutes or so, Chase neared the Northwestern pathway. He could now slightly see it over the small hills and rustic houses.

A sense of hope lit up in the deepest part of Chase's being.

I can make it... Chase thought as his breaths slowed.

However, the boy's hopes were shortly killed as the full view of the Northwestern gate came into sight. A large number of armed savages and horses stood near it in ranks of five or so.

Chase's thoughts grew ragged, and his heart stopped in his chest.

What the boy had assumed was a woman was sitting lazily on the ground, leaning against a charred gate pillar. She had short raven-black hair that leaked from the bottom of her helmet and wore a suit of heavy armor made of what the boy assumed were frozen rocks.

The helmet had a large stone spike that stuck out of the center of the forehead. Instead of your typical mask, this one had no eye or mouth holes. It was only a human head-shaped rock that had no face.

The woman had a terrifyingly powerful radiance that seemed to simply halt Chase in place on top of the small hill that separated the pillagers from the boy.

She slowly stood up and began to walk in the boy's direction in a casual manner.

Chase noticed that there were two men—or what Chase had only guessed were men—lying lifeless and battered to the point of no recognition.

They were drenched in a sea of red, and their bodies were formless. The men had been nearly completely crushed by whatever had taken their lives.

The boy finally came back to consciousness, just in time to quickly stagger back; however, his back had finally given out.

He fell to his knees.

Chase quickly tried to push off the ground in a futile attempt to throw himself back and farther away from what looked like the leader of the pillagers.

The woman neared the boy, now only eight or so meters away.

"I am Rhysara of House Toxin," the woman said slowly, in a hard voice that was full of killing intent.

She lifted her hands and began to adjust rusted-over straps on the lower corners of her helmet. As the air grew thin, the woman silently removed her helmet. Underneath it was the face of a younger woman with piercing gray eyes.

A large and twisted scar ran across her face, starting from her right temple to the left corner of her mouth.

She spoke in a pitiful tone, "Spawn of the Abyss, we have been paid kindly to take your life," she paused. "So, I will now kill you; however, as a warrior of honor, I will allow you to speak your last words freely," she said whilst drawing a beautiful silver longsword from her hip.

Chase did not have anything to say. There was no point in wasting breath if there was even the slightest chance that maybe his father would save him.

However, after a long thirty seconds, the boy had finally gathered enough energy to speak.

"Go to hell..." Chase mumbled as audibly as he physically could.

The woman did not respond and simply lifted the two-meter blade above her own head.

This was it...

I'm going to die... Chase quietly thought as he could see his entire life flash before his eyes.

He asked himself if perhaps Cloudy and Kade had been able to escape. He wondered if his father had survived.

Chase was about to close his eyes as the longsword reached the climax of its height.

When suddenly...

A bright flash coming from where Chase had assumed was the schoolhouse revealed a white beacon of light reaching far into the sky.

Rhysara hissed as the savages began to rile up. "Damn that ancient sack of bones!"

Rhysara scowled into the distance fiercely as she began to yell back to her men. "Soldiers, I could kill the boy now; however, I am sure that he will eventually die on his own, and then there is that..." She pointed to the beacon that swirled mystically in the distance. "That is so much more valuable than the boy..."

With that, Rhysara shot into the air like a cannon, leaving the ground ruptured where she stood as a gust of wind pushed Chase's already hunched-over body to the ground.

Only around half of the soldiers began to march toward their leader, while the other half stayed to protect the gate.

Chase used all of the power left in his being to push himself up from the ground into a crawling position.

He began to slowly yet surely crawl in the opposite direction of the Northwestern pathway.

Chase figured that if they had guards at the Northwestern gate, then there were probably guards at the only other exit to the village as well.

So the boy planned to simply find a place with no guards on the edge of town, where he would inevitably have to escape through the Dark Forest...

After struggling to crawl, Chase eventually gained enough strength back to stand and then walk. With a gait, he finally reached a spot on the western side of the town.

It had a small clearing between the trees, where two large bushes separated the small forest on the edge of the village from the pitch-black overgrown trees.

Chase was around ten meters away from the forest when it began. Chase could hear faint whispers, as well as spot strange things in the dark shadows of the towering Dark Forest.

Looking at the forest was like staring into a deep empty hole; however, instead of empty, the Dark Forest held monsters of unknown origins, and Chase was about to plunge straight into it alone.

The air near the forest grew colder, carrying the faint scent of decay. Leaves rustled in patterns that didn't match the wind, and shadows flickered as though alive.

The sun was starting to reveal itself above the tree line, and loud steps could be heard on the pathway behind him.

Chase quickly steadied himself and stepped forward...