A drop of rain woke them up and as their reflections showed on the showy windows in an alley, they are exactly the same age for when they fought to death the other day at the waterfall.

“What’s happening?”, Matthew exclaimed as a mechanical entity tends to the laundry and clothes inside the building.

“I don’t know… I think I just had a…”

“Nightmare?”, Nicolas jinxed him by the end of his sentence.

The voices from the distance confirmed that they are still inside a nightmare, “Again?”, they both looked at each other.

“Let’s just run for now”, Matthew proposed.

“As if we have a choice”, Nicolas agreed when a single hot ray of light burned his leg. “What was that, Ow”, he uttered reaching for his leg. It had no blood but there’s a hole, “Did you see what that was?”, he turned around and saw Matthew falling to the ground.

The left side of his stomach has a hole, cauterized. Nicolas felt concerned for the other boy, worried for him and at the same time angry about their pursuers.

Out of his frustration, his eyes glowed blue and called forth a bow. He fired a shot thinking just one thing, “Die”. He pulled the strings of the seemingly luminous bow as their pursuers drew closer and closer.

“He’s firing, SCATTER”, one of the men on the front yelled while all of his comrades went to the sides in a hurry.

“Try evading this”, Nicolas thought as the bow glowed even brighter, enough to illuminate the whole alley. Once he had let go of the arrow, it sent a blue stream of light to the narrow alley liquefying anyone and anything it came in contact with.

Though their comrades dead down below, the snipers kept shooting, almost getting a head shot out of Nicolas if he had not evaded. Only his right ear was the casualty.

“What are you doing?”, Matthew uttered weakly as he watched Nicolas counter the shots with his bow and the light beams came raining from above, “Those laser beams are pesky aren’t they?”, his eyes also glowed blue as he produced a shield for protection and sat up. “You should save yourself while you still can” he whispered, changing places with Nicolas.

“I don’t know what I am doing, and I don’t even know what was going on”, Nicolas tried to calm himself down.

“Me neither”

“Have you somehow seen a past memory of mine before all of this happened?”, Nicolas asked trying to pinpoint the sniper from the darkness.

“Like that time when you thought that girl died? And other not so important events that happened in your life?”, Matthew coughed blood as his soul began to flicker. “You’ve had a horrible life didn’t you?”.

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“Yeah and so were you”, Nicolas dragged him slowly as they backed away from the sight of the enemy.

“So am I?”, Matthew stared at him in confusion.

“Don’t tell me you can’t remember?”

“Remember what?”, five beams came hitting Matthew’s shield causing it to break. Nicolas had no other choice but to give up shooting and handle the defense.

“Don’t you have any recollection of your childhood?”.

“What?”

“Anything that happened? deaths? killings? that you may have forgotten?”

“Deaths? Killings?”

“Forget it, let’s just get away from here”, Nicolas softly swiftly recalled his soul and helped Matthew walked. They looked like two drunken dudes who got out of a bar and can’t walk straight.

With their pursuer dead and them out of the sniper’s view, they managed to hide behind another alley beside a dumpster as the rain started to pour heavily.

“What’s really happening here?”, Nicolas murmured as he sat opposite Matthew.

“What do you mean earlier? Am I forgetting something? What did you saw in my memory?”

“Do you really want to know?”, Nicolas asked tending to his lost ear and hole bearing leg.

“After all the words you used to describe it, do you think I’d just sit here and be oblivious?”

“Prepare yourself then, I don’t know if this will work but call you soul. Any form will be fine, this might give away our location but if you insist, here goes everything”, Nicolas laughed before manifesting his sword.

He stood up and went closer to Matthew who’s bewildered by the color of his soul, “Is it only me, or did my soul changed its color. It was pitched black before”

“I never noticed, I thought it’s already the same color as mine, before all of this started”

He kneeled, placed his hand on Matthew’s head and closed his eyes. He showed him what he saw, all of it, no cuts, all the screams and the blood. By the time he opened his eyes Matthew was silently crying.

“I always thought that I’ve forgotten something. That Liam said he found me somewhere and that I owe him my life and soul”, he uttered, as he rested his head beside the dumpster, “What a sad life. My family, dead, father possessed by something, and my soul is corrupted”

“Well, there’s nothing we can do about it now”, Nicolas sat back down.

Matthew stared at his own sword with curiosity, “I guess this is really what my soul looks like before that night”

“I think so”

“I wonder what the other side would look like”, Matthew closed his eyes while his soul began to change colors. “Wow”, he laughed. “I really am corrupted”, he waved the pitch-black sword in the air.

“What would you do now?”, Nicolas asked.

“I don’t know, but none of that matters now, I’m dying”, he looked up at the cloudy dark sky before bitterly looking back down and watched his reflection on a puddle. “Doesn’t this sight look familiar to you? I felt like I’ve been here before”

“How could that be? We never had guns on Gregoria, nor lasers or concrete buildings this big in Yggdryas. I doubt not anywhere in the world would have these kind of things”, Nicolas pointed at the skyscrapers from afar.

“I don’t know, but don’t you find it strange that you know what a gun or a laser is, despite seeing it for first time?”

Nicolas’s mouth was left half open when he too have realized the fact. “Maybe you’re just delirious. Wait a minute, it’s not only you soul that’s changed, your hair too, it turned black. It’s quite unsettling, it’s like I’m talking to my own reflection”, he sarcastically replied while still trying to dismiss the conversation.

Matthew had also noticed the change since the start of their nightmares but disregarded it until now. “I have no idea. On the other hand, I can assure you, I’m dying, not delirious”, Matthew fought too hard to laugh but ended up coughing blood instead.

“No, you’re just badly injured, so you should shut up and rest”

“I’m stating a fact”

“No, you’re not. Unless I get help”, Nicolas struggled to get himself up, using the wall as he desperately wanted tried to stand, “Stay here and rest, I’ll get some help”

“I’m already passed savable, you’d only be endangering yourself”, Matthew tried to stop him but he’s already too weak to even move a finger.