Leo doddered alone through the darkness, barely leaping the grasping tendrils, barely ducking the encroaching students, who screamed out in pain for someone to please gods help them. When Leo started running instead of being carried, he had no idea, but the logistics of his escape were far from his mind.

Were they dead? Was he dead? Was this all a dream? It couldn’t be real. Surely no one would let this happen. Any moment, Era would step in and fix everything, banish this damnable thing and return them to peace. Surely, any moment now…

“But he’s not coming, is he?”

Suddenly, Leo no longer stumbled through dark corridors and even darker shadows. He was home, sitting on the edge of his bed with his mother. Was this a memory? It looked familiar, felt familiar, too, a strange sense of deja vu invading Leo’s mind.

“Well…” Leo’s mother’s eyes darted to the side, her hand shooting up to caress her strained neck, “...your fathers a very important man, they need him for the war effort. He tried so hard to be home, sweety, he really did. You know how much he loves you, but he just couldn’t make it this year.”

His 8th birthday. Of course, he remembered now. It’d been years since he last saw his father, but he promised–he promised–that he’d turn out that year…

“If he loves me, then why can’t he come home? Does he even remember we exist?” Leo said, his current mind seeping into the body of the young Leo.

“Of course he does, honey, but people are depending on him. He’s saved the lives of so many people, given us everything we have,” Leo’s mother slipped off the bed, kneeling in front of Leo and taking his hands in her own, tears welling in her eyes. “Someday this will all be over and your father won’t have to live in the capitol anymore. We just have to be really, really patient.”

Leo sat there, burning as a furnace with a wash of different conflicting emotions, rage, sorrow, injustice, hatred, want, all pooling together within his heart, each fighting for absolute dominance.

It was the same story every year: too busy fighting on the front lines, too busy saving lives, too busy being a hero. It was all he ever cared for, the only thing he ever gave real attention to. Why did he even start a family in the first place if he couldn’t be bothered to send them so much as a postcard every now and then, why have Leo? Was he truly nothing more than a male heir to the name? It disgusted him, filled him with that familiar burning wrath he knew oh so long ago.

“He never truly appreciated you, did he? Could you even say that he loved you? Could you even call him a father? I wouldn’t.”

Slowly, the shadows crept in all about Leo, latching at his legs and pulling, the scene around him fading to absolute darkness with Leo none the wiser. He hated this feeling, hated the waiting. He just wanted it all to be over, but it never was. Every day he woke up wishing he’d never been born in the first place, just to have to do it all again.

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The shadows pulled Leo down, sinking him up to his shins.

How much longer was he meant to go on like this? That same day, the very night of Leo’s 8th birthday, they received a postcard detailing his fathers death. It was that day that Leo realized just how unfair the world was, how much it despised him, how it laughed at his misery. Oh, you want your father back? No, we’ll just keep him, actually.

The shadows pulled Leo even further, sinking him up to his waist.

And now everyone expected Leo to follow in his fathers footsteps, like they were even remotely similar. “Oh, your father was so brave, he was so strong. Why can’t you be more like him?” Well, maybe Leo could if he’d actually been raised by his father. He couldn’t even remember what his face looked like anymore.

The shadows pulled Leo up to his neck, finding no struggle left within the boy. He really was such an easy target, hardly a will to resist at all.

The only thing that even kept Leo afloat at all these days was Trenton. Without his guidance, his strength, his support, Leo would’ve given up a long, long time ago…Trenton. Oh gods, what was he doing?

Just then, Leo realized what was happening and thrashed about desperately to resist, but he found no purchase among the shadows. He could only reach out desperately towards that fading flicker of light from the sun overhead, fingers disappearing along with his body, one by one.

“KEEP FIGHTING!”

A hand, strong, calloused, rough, clasped around Leo’s wrist with an iron grip, plunging its way into the shadows to dredge Leo from their depths. The shadows, displeased to lose their meal, wildly gripped at Leo’s heart and body, tearing him downwards with the strength of thousands of men all compounding upon each other.

But no matter how hard they pulled, the hand never yielded, yanking Leo harder, and harder, and harder until Leo thought his hand would be ripped clean off his body. Of course, what was he doing? He made Trenton a promise, didn’t he? They weren’t done yet. Time to get back to work.

Leo flew from the dark pool, landing solidly on his feet just beside Trenton,only slightly upheaving gallons of viscous black fluids, some even seeping out of his eyes and skin.

Around him, as his ears slowly cleared, Leo heard the muffled sounds of fighting, saw a dark figure coated in black bile, blood, and shadow bashing through waves after wave of encroaching shadowed students, effortlessly bashing his way through the ranks with single strikes as if they were no more than paper weights before a mountain.

…Trenton?

“You alright!?” Trenton shoulder, swinging Leo around him by the shoulder with one arm, using the other to bash his way through a shadow that had creeped up on Leo while he recovered.

Leo fumbled for his sword, mind reeling from the dream he’d just been pulled from, “...no,” he choked, lighting his body ablaze in a vain attempt to push back at the unnatural darkness.

Trenton locked eyes with him, stern expression softening for a moment, “Yeah, I know. But now isn’t the time. We have to focus,” he said, summoning a dozen spikes made from stone to skewer the students like pit roasts from below.

“...right,” Leo searched his mind, desperately trying to recall what Yissle was trying to tell him earlier. Something about a… “Core, there’s a core at the center of the building. We need to reactivate it.”

“That’s what that is?” Trenton’s eyes darted around as the ceiling and walls began to shake. They weren’t getting anywhere like this. There were easily thousands of students within this building. They couldn’t kill them all, not even questioning if they should be killing them at all. “Alright, I’ve got an idea. Do you trust me?” Trenton held out his hand.

“Of course,” Leo said, taking it without hesitation as the ground cracked and crumbled beneath them.