The bright light of the afternoon rang through the air. Janna stepped through the swinging door of the town bookstore, carrying with her a stack of texts. On the dirt road stood her father beside a wooden cart.

“Find everything you needed?”

“Just about,” she huffed, plopping the books into the cart. “The aptitude test is in six months, I think these'll keep me busy until then.”

Eli turned to grab the cart's wooden handles before his daughter beat him to the punch. Smiling, he watched her steadily guide the wagon down the unkept road, a precarious task for the cart’s loose axle. The horizon was visible from the corner of his eye, all the way down the main street and into the wastes. In the distance, on that arid shore, a speck of black appeared.

That speck quickly became a shadow; a spectre veiled by dust and the waving fingers of heat that steamed up from the Earth. Within moments, proximity ripped the veil from the specter, which revealed itself to be a single man on horseback. The figure leaped from his horse, landing in the dust with a hunch and straightening his back out like a corpse. He was clad in a brown leather vest, his mouth obscured by a red bandana tied firmly around his head, his hair was short, dark, and spikey. His features all drew focus to the one part of his face clearly visible, his piercing blue eyes.

“There’s a man called Gallow here.” His voice had a cold, sickening quality to it, like he was speaking to the dirt. His feet had touched down nearest to the father and daughter, and his unnerving gaze was set on them.

“W-what do you want with him?” trembled Janna.

The man closed his eyes for a moment in contemplation. “So, he’s still here, then?”

Janna pulled closer to her father, shocked that he was able to confirm that off of such a miniscule reaction.

“I’m here to take him dead,” he continued, sweeping his eyes over the other members of town passing by who had been transfixed by his arrival. “If you’d rather, I could take this whole town for dead in his place.”

Not a sound touched the air but the gentle breeze against the ground.

“So? Where is he?!” He snapped, the hostility enough to rock them to their cores, like a spark to gasoline. His stare flicked to Eli, who instinctively gestured Janna behind him.

“He- he's-” he choked out.

“He's upstairs.”

The mysterious rider turned around to find Gabriel standing in the saloon's entrance, arms crossed and with a cold, tired scowl. He turned his gaze upwards, towards the second floor window of the saloon and through the glass to find a gun barrel pointed in his direction. In an instant, a shot blasted through the glass, launching shards to the street below. The bullet lodged itself in a wooden beam behind the rider, who had pivoted to the side just in time to avoid the blast. He snapped his attention to the window once more to see Gallow, shirtless save for the bandages around his abdomen, staring directly into his eyes with a cold glare.

“Go away,” he commanded without breaking eye contact with Gallow. Janna and her father fled the scene, leaving the cart behind.

“Dad,” she panted. “Why is this happening again?”

Her father huffed, “I don't know, I don't know.”

---

“My name is Fiemme, and I've come to burn you to the ground.”

With those words, he raised his hand, revealing an orange tulip. Gallow's eyes narrowed, as his enemy had seemingly pulled this flower out of thin air.

“Adesso, dare fuoco, [ARIA IN CATENE].”

The words drifted from his lips, catching the petals of the tulip and picking them from the stem. As the petals floated towards the window, they stretched and grew until suddenly they were not recognizable as plant, but instead tongues of flame.

Panic filled Gallow’s heart, an almost supernatural guiding force pulled him not from the window, but toward it. The sigil on his hand tingled, his legs moved with a sudden, violent speed, leaping from the floor out through the shattered pane and into the open air. A crippling agony cut into his side, his injury throbbed, but he was afforded no time to think about pain as he fell towards the ground. A sudden wind caught him beneath his feet, breaking his fall and letting him drop safely.

“Now… what was that?” Fiemme with a stone-faced calmness.

“I could ask the same of you,” Gallow retorted. “But I have a feeling I already get the idea.”

Fiemme shook his head. “Talk is useless now.” He produced another tulip from nowhere, held tightly between his middle and ring fingers.

With a single, sharp breath, the petals were racing towards Gallow, who swiftly dodged the flames before they dissipated into the air. He raised his pistol with blinding speed, launching another shot at the rider. The bullet cracked through the air, whizzing past its mark’s ear close enough to shock a weaker man to death.

Fiemme turned his vision to the nearby bookstore, pulling out two more tulips and extending his arm in the building's direction. Gallow could read his opponent’s intent immediately.

“No!” he shouted, firing once more in a desperate attempt to disarm him.

“That arm! I'll shoot that arm!” Gallow’s mind raced as his bullet flew through the air; it closed in on the flame-wielder's forearm, if only it could move a millisecond faster.

Five inches.

Three inches.

One inch.

Fiemme's arm lowered by seven degrees.

WHIZ

Fiemme turned his head and pulled down his bandana to flash a hollow smile. Petals barraged the wooden walls of the bookstore; a tongue of fire caught in the dry air. In seconds, flames had engulfed the front wall of the establishment.

Rage flooded Gallow’s veins. It was a big enough risk the first time, now others were involved in his problems. This was unacceptable.

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A heave of anger left his mouth through his teeth, grit from the constant, piercing pain. The hammer of his gun knocked back a blistering amount of times in a single second, lead filled the air like dust. Blinded by fury, Gallow burst across the distance between them, the sigil on his hand tingling with pins and needles. Fiemme was nothing but a black shadow in a smoky world which Gallow struck dead-on with the palm of his hand. All of his fury was discharged into a single physical blow, something the crack of gunfire could never replace.

The smoke cleared, revealing what remained of Fiemme. His body, ridden with bullet holes, barely clung to life.

Slowly, he fell back, his back hit the ground with a solid, heavy impact. Blood streamed from the wounds that had opened up all over his body; crimson streaks to the ground, soaked up by the dirt.

Gallow heaved, his breathing still strained. The reality of what had happened had not yet settled in.

As the adrenaline wore off, pain returned to his body. He grabbed his side, the terrible ache filling him once more; it was so intense he could barely move, his legs shaking, his eyes clamped shut from the sensation. In the peripheries of his blurred vision, he could see Fiemme open his eyes one last time. From the dying man’s hands appeared six tulips held clasped between his fingers.

Gallow's eyes dilated with dread.

"Inghiottite..." he choked out. “[ARIA IN CATENE…]” His words faded into the air as the blossoms rose and dispersed.

"No!" Gallow screamed as the petals transfigured into great breaths of flame. The heat was instant and scorching, Gallow’s body was engulfed by the bright orange ignition, and the world became like a living hell.

The fire suffocated him, his whole being was trapped in unrelenting pain, death was swift and inescapable. He could feel his body floating in a pit of agony. Within such a torturous realm he could feel only the back of his right hand, the sigil, tingling, guiding him.

“--?!”

He couldn’t even think in sentences, his pure animal knowledge took his hand.

With the grace of a bird, he extended his arm outwards and pushed off. In the midst of his hellish pain, there was a newfound serene goal he felt the tides of fate were rushing him towards, unknown, but definite.

The flames of the bookstore caught to the nearby buildings; within minutes, the fire was spreading throughout the town. At first one citizen stepped out, and soon cries of “fire!” bounded across the small community. Panic ensued as they rushed about, dumping their limited supplies of water onto the flames, hoping to douse the terror away, but to no avail.

Gallow was being pulled to the outskirts of town.

---

“Dad, is that fire?”

They had just reached their home and were setting about boarding it up, but while Eli was searching for his shotgun, Janna had peered out the window from behind the safety of a curtain. Their home was only a few minutes away from the town proper, with just a short stretch of dirt road separating them.

The sound of concern in his daughter’s voice triggered a parental urge in Eli; he turned around to see what she was seeing: smoke rising into the air.

“Dear God,” he whispered.

Janna looked anxiously from his eyes, drowning in worry, to the sight out of the window. “What's happening?! Is the town going to burn down?!”

“How much water do we have stored?”

Janna didn’t like the graveness in his tone, it seemed to confirm her fears without saying it directly. “You mean our drinking water?” she asked, restraining her voice so that her own worry didn’t add to his.

“Yes, yes!” he said, his calm demeanor giving way to urgency.

“Goodness, I don't know!” her voice cracked, and her hands trembled uncontrollably at her sides.

Suddenly, as Janna again looked out the window, she made out a blazing figure racing towards their home. Within the human inferno, she caught Gallow's eyes, unmistakably. She twisted the doorknob and bolted out into the front yard.

“Wait! Wait!” she cried at him. She had no idea what she was doing, but some raging impulse commanded her legs to move.

Her distressed call seemed not to reach him; he was in another world. Or, at least, another lens of the world. Gallow couldn’t see anything, as the fluid in his eyes was evaporating; he couldn’t feel anything, as his nerve endings were roasted; but he did feel something, or rather, he could have sworn he heard it.

Janna had never seen a fire that raised smoke over more than half the town. This gravity of this moment was unprecedented, her confusion and fear had taken rule over her mind. Within that frenzied world, the only thing she could think of was to follow the flaming idol of the man who had saved them once before.

Within seconds, she caught up to him, waving her arms. Suddenly, Gallow’s fiery form lurched forward; at the same moment, Janna's foot caught a stray rock, and both of them fell face-forward into a dead tree.

---

Janna's eyes snapped open to attention, a warm, peaceful light filled her vision.

“Hm?” It was eerily quiet and… serene? For a second, she was under the impression that she had died, that the same evil force that had started the fires had appeared and taken her life like an angel of death.

In order to sit up, she had to plant her palms in the grass.

“Grass?”

Surrounding her was a lush garden of grass and flowers. Trees of species unknown to her extended up into the sky, and their branches cast a cool shade over her. A few feet from her was a spring from which fresh water was flowing.

“I'm dreaming” she thought, turning her head in every direction. “I must be dreaming. I hit my head and I'm imagining this right now.”

She gave a quick, sharp sigh.

“I suppose I may as well make the most of this dream, then.”

With that, she rose to her feet and walked over to the spring, which pooled in a small pond at its base. In the waters lay a body, facedown and seemingly lifeless. Janna recoiled in surprise, but just as quickly kicked her shoes off and stepped into the pond to lift the body out.

To her surprise, it belonged to Gallow, the man who had saved the town not but a few days beforehand. She quickly pulled him to dry land, laying him down. Immediately beginning CPR on his body, she kneeled before him and worked for two minutes to save him. Finally, his body heaved and he coughed up a large amount of water.

He groaned, opening his eyes to find that he was looking up at her face, smiling with relief that he was conscious.

“Where the hell am I?” he wondered aloud, turning his head to glance at their surroundings.

“Um…” Janna’s mouth squished to one side in puzzlement. “My dream.”

“Really?” Gallow’s brow raised.

“Yes, it seems so.” She said it so matter-of-factly that Gallow almost laughed.

“Tell me if this hurts then.”

“What?”

He reached up and delivered a flick between her eyes.

“Ow!” she cried, rubbing her forehead and scrunching her eyes.

“You don't feel pain in a dream, that's the best part,” Gallow remarked without enthusiasm. “So unless you have some real bargain-bin dreams, I don’t think we’re in one.” He sat up and rubbed his eyes.

“It could be your dream…” Janna mumbled, prompting Gallow to twist around to shoot her an annoyed look. As soon as he did, though, it was replaced by a blank, curious stare that caused Janna’s eyes to dart around, looking for what he was reacting to.

“Hey,” he said, gazing down at his chest, still wrapped in bandages. “I don't feel any pain right now.” He grabbed the side of his broken rib. "What the-” he stuttered. “There's no pain left…!"

Janna looked on at his body, somewhat embarrassed, but out of a similar curiosity.

Gallow then examined his arms, legs, and torso, running his hands over them to make sure. “I don't have any burn scars either…” he observed. His attention snapped up abruptly to their environment.

“Just… what is this place, anyway?”

The sound of rushing water caught both of them by surprise, and they turned to the Spring to see streams of clear liquid rising and swirling about, as if by magic. The swirling waters congregated into one mass, recognizable in the form of a woman.

“Greetings,” a cool voice whispered from seemingly all around them. “I am the Spirit of the Garden of Armony.”