The entire room bustling with motion came to a stop as everyone in there stared past their guide at Zalia and Ember.

“Um, hey. Zen?” Zalia said into the silence.

The entire room turned towards Zen as he looked at her with disbelief.

“You’re alive?” he asked incredulously.

“Wish people would stop saying that,” Zalia muttered.

The entire room went back to their separate tasks at Zen’s confirmation of knowing the visitor. He stood up, passed the child off to one of the other adults in the room and stepped carefully past a few people on his way to the door.

“How are you here?” he asked, giving her a hug that she returned with more strength than she intended.

She’d missed him more than she realised, the worry for his state after her last sight of him being a blade through the chest dissipating in one tight embrace.

“It’s a long story,” she said into his shoulder.

“I’ll bet, come, sit down,” he said, pulling away and gesturing to the room.

“Space for a furry friend?” Zalia asked.

He looked past her towards where Boreal was standing, an almost fully grown feline that reached up to Zalia’s chest now. She would probably grow just a little bit more from Zalia’s estimation.

“Boreal?” Zen asked in surprise.

“She’s a fast grower,” Zalia explained.

Ember grabbed Zen in an embrace as well.

“Good to see you’re alright Zen,” she said.

“And you. I wanted to try and find you and Indis after realising how wrong things had gone but had to get my family to safety,” Zen said.

He pulled away and moved into the room behind, gesturing to a couple free seats.

“This is my father Anton, my mother Annette, twin younger siblings Harry and Jaz, my grandmother Polina and my cousins Jasper, baby Ingrid, Terrance, Garrett and Fiona, who you have met,” Zen said, introducing each person in the room in turn.

Zalia was overwhelmed by the list of names she definitely wouldn’t remember but tried her best to return the courtesy.

“I’m Zalia, this is Ember, Boreal and little Aylie,” she introduced weakly, giving an awkward wave of greeting.

Despite the somewhat large room, she felt just a little bit claustrophobic at the sheer number of people in the room already.

“We’ve heard that you died, by Zen’s accounting. I hope you’ve got a good story to entertain us with,” the older man who was working some leather, Zen’s father Anton, said.

“Well, it’s probably not what I’d call entertaining,” Zalia explained, stepping past the young twins Harry and Jaz as they ran up to meet Aylie and Boreal.

Deciding Boreal would be able to keep Aylie somewhat safe from the joint harassment of two terrible twins, she took a seat pointed out to her by Zen.

“What happened after we left you to walk the rest of the way to your home?” Ember asked Zen as she sat crushed up next to Zalia, armour still on.

It was quite uncomfortable yet somehow, comforting.

“Well, when I got home everything was fine for all of half a day. I caught up with my parents, got to see my little siblings again. Even cousin Fiona was there, a pleasant surprise,” Zen started.

“I managed to avoid the mass drafting for the war. I used to be a guard in Alston,” Fiona supplied.

“Yes, so I was happy to find that she was alive and well, not some thrall as part of the king's army. Well, it didn’t take long for the first of the demons to find us. We fought them off easily enough, a small group of the flying Tin ranked ones. I knew what it meant though, that none of Endaria was safe,” Zen continued,” I sent Fiona to go get her family while we packed to leave. Dad didn’t want to leave his farm for anything, he’d lived there his whole life after all. Well, that changed when Fiona came back some hours later with her other siblings in tow, all of them bathed in blood. The demons got to them too and their parents didn’t make it out.”

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

There was silence in the room as Zen explained, Zalia noticing the downcast expressions of Zen’s cousins. They had experienced the death of their parents to those monsters then.

“That convinced dad well enough and we left. I brought them here because it is the closest thing I knew to be safe. I didn’t want to go to Endelbyrn as I had no trust in the Morning’s Shade any longer, nor did I wish to try and travel through half of Endaria to reach the army, an army I didn’t know whether it was destroyed or not. So, I came here. Glemp was kind enough to take us in and we started helping out how we could. A few times I’ve been back to Endaria to see if I could discover what was happening there and have brought back groups of refugees fleeing one town or another. The rest you can probably figure out from there, really,” Zen finished.

“I’m glad you got out safe,” Zalia said.

“Not all of us did,” he replied.

That left Zalia in silence. It would be a long time before the kingdom recovered from the recent events. If it even survived them.

“What about you Zalia, where in the worlds have you been?” Zen asked.

“Ember first,” she said, not quite ready to retell the story again.

Ember went on to explain how after her and Indis had encountered their first pack of demons they had gone back to find the farm where Zen lived. The farm had been destroyed and no sign of the family in sight. Having no idea as to where Zen had gone, they had then left to see if they could help the army in any way, not wanting to abandon their people. She explained how the army was still holding on and had in fact managed to put up quite a fight, now trying to find a way to take back the capital so they could launch a cleansing campaign against the demons from there.

In most ways, Indis and Ember were two very different people. Their temperament, actions, way of thinking and many other facets of their personalities were different if not at odds. One thing that they had in common, however, was the urge they had to help the people of Endaria. Indis because she saw herself as a leader of the kingdom, somewhat rightfully so as one of the previously largest political families and childhood friend of the king and Ember because of her kind-natured heart and her moral compass.

it sometimes seemed that the current events within the kingdom were one of the only reasons they could still stand working with each other.

Once her side of the story was done, Zen and the rest of his family turned to Zalia. Apparently, these people liked to sit in circles and tell each other stories. Even the twins had stopped inspecting Aylie and were sitting on the floor by the warm fire crackling in the fireplace.

Zalia started out a little self-consciously, some memory of Indis’ reaction to her retelling of events sitting in the back of her mind. At the lack of interruption and a gentle mental thought of support from Boreal, she finished retelling what had happened to her and Boreal, what they had been through and how she had made it back. She left out some of the detail of the more gruesome or traumatic parts, partly because of the children present and partly because she couldn’t emotionally handle it at that moment.

“Quite a story lass,” Zen’s father said, once she was finished.

Lass? She wasn’t that much younger than he was. She definitely wasn’t a young woman either.

“It has been a rather eventful few months, yeah,” she agreed.

“Not that I am not happy to see you, but why did you come north?” Zen asked.

“Zen!” Zen’s mother, Annette, exclaimed.

“What?” he asked confusedly.

Shaking her head at Zen, finding amusement at his somehow continued obliviousness, Zalia gave his mother a warm smile.

“I actually came to see if the Heat and Stone denizens would fight with us,” Zalia explained.

Zen frowned.

“Well, I don’t speak for them but I don’t think they would leave this mountain to be honest. Why would they? It’s defensible, not surrounded by enemies, secluded and, most importantly, safe.”

“Because if the army fails, those demons aren’t going to stop with Endaria. They will take over this whole world, consume it piece by piece. I’ve been to Cormaine, I’ve seen what happens when they are left unchecked. It is not something anyone wants to experience, I promise you that,” Zalia argued.

“Well, I can understand that but they might not see it the same way. They have lived in relative safety within this mountain for a very long time, from what I can gather.”

“Not as long as you might think. They did not originate in Endaria. Glemp’s people come from Cormaine, in fact,” Zalia said.

“What?” Zen said.

“Delphi, the oracle friend I mentioned, told me of a memory they and their collective had kept stored for many, many years. A memory of Glemp's own people and other types of the same race that came to the collective to ask questions. The collective were created on Cormaine, back when it was not a hell but a thriving, living world,” Zalia explained.

Most of the people in the room were quiet, processing the information she brought. It heavily challenged the beliefs of a lot of people, the fact that Cormaine wasn’t the afterlife but a sister world to their own, one that had fallen to the very demons that were invading Endaria at this moment. Where those demons had come from in the first place, neither Ro-ak or Zalia knew.

“For what it’s worth, us and the other Endarians living here are behind you. We would love to do what we can to help in this war. I think I can speak for us all when I say we want our homes back,” Anton said.

“Well, will you come with me and try convince the Heat and Stone denizens to fight for this world as well?” Zalia asked.

“We’ll do what we can.”