The black mists swirled around the city of Dofen, moved by a wind that Jakob could neither hear nor feel. Sometimes he thought he heard them howling through the streets, and yet other times they were soundless, and other times yet, he swore he heard a voice, calling out to him. He would often run to where he thought he heard the voice, but there was never anyone there.

‘Not that there could be anyone left.’

The thought cut across his mind like a bolt, jolting him with confusion. He shook his head jerkily, in an attempt to clear the fog weighing on his mind. Why did he think that? This was the city he grew up in, a bustling metropolis in the south of the Empire. Why would it be empty? And why did he feel so sure it was? It had been so full of people just that morning.

This, too, startled his thoughts for reasons he couldn’t quite understand. He’d been walking the city for what must have been days now, but it was just this morning that he’d been…

What had he been doing?

“That’s it, you can remember” Jakobs’ head snapped around in confusion, before he felt the touch of a finger on his forehead and the world went black.

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“Ugh” He let out a groan as an assault of sunlight streamed in on top of him. Covering his head in an attempt to quiet the pounding of his skull, he heard a laughing voice.

“Good morning sleepy, glad to see you’re not entirely gone from the land of the living” the voice shook him from his attempt to escape his hangover.

Uncurling and propping himself up on his elbows, he saw the breathtaking figure of Sophia looking down at him, the slightest smile touching her lips. A spark of mirth danced across her blue eyes as she saw him desperately try to appear dignified. With a light laugh she moved away from the window, letting the morning sunlight stream in.

“And you can stop gawping at me and get ready for your shift. My father wasn’t too pleased with how your drinking competition ended last night, and he probably won’t be too pleased if you show up to work late again.”

A flood of memories of the night before caused another groan from his lips, prompting another laugh from Sophia.

“Do you think he’ll dock the chair from my pay?” his first words of the morning were hoarse and croaky, and he gladly accepted the mug of water offered to him by the smiling beauty.

“Matter’s of wealth are for the men to quarrel over, for the women shall see to the matter’s of import, of heart and soul” Her cadence made him believe she was quoting something, but he couldn’t fathom from where, she always had been more well read than he was.

Had been? For a second there was a ringing in his head as he struggled to understand why he had thought of her in the past tense, she was right in front of him.

“What am I going to do with you Jakob?” her tone softened as she sat on the end of his bed, breaking him out of his moment of confusion “You know father wants to give you the inn when he retires.”

“Aye,” he replied, taking her hands in his, “and when he does, you know he’ll be the one with the drinking competitions, and I’ll be the one cleaning up the broken chairs.” She pulled away with another soft laugh, then leaned back in for a lingering kiss.

“I’ll see you at the inn, Jakob. I’ll try and soothe father’s anger, and you make sure you get there in the next half bell, or I might need to find another suitor who drinks less. Maybe I’ll go for someone serious this time; Claus was asking around the inn a few weeks ago, I wonder if he’s as strong as he looks” His scowl followed her as she laughed her way out of the room. He heard her stop to greet his sister before the sound of the front door opening and closing reached him.

With a sigh, Jakob got to work getting himself presentable for the day ahead of him. His work at the inn meant he kept later hours than most, so the sun being higher in the sky didn’t deter him too much. Sophia said her father, Gerolf, would be mad at him for being late, but he knew she liked to exaggerate and poke fun at him. In reality, if he showed up to The Dwarven Rest any time before Noon bell he’d be in the man’s good graces. She had conveniently left out the fact that her father was sat at the table with them when the drinking competition was taking place. Not that he took part, of course, he was much too respectable for that, but he could have stopped them if he had been so inclined. The man liked to pretend he was from some kind of noble lineage, he thought it made him more agreeable with the richer guests, but the truth was he was as rough as the rest of them.

Passing into the common area he shared with his sister he found her grinning widely at him over the table, mug of tea in hand.

“Don’t you start” he grumbled at her as he sat down across from her, accepting his own mug of tea with a nod of thanks.

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.” Somehow her grin stretched even wider. “On a completely unrelated topic, do you want to come gambling with me later? I could use some of your luck” She ducked back out of reach of his swipe with a mocking laugh, sticking her tongue out at him when she was safely leaning on the counter.

“What’ll I do with you, oh poor Jakob, brute that you are” Her imitation of Sophia was shrill and accompanied by a mock swoon, back of the hand on her forehead as she leant back.

“Beth, stop” he chided her, taking a drink of his tea as he did. Not as bitter as he was used to, he noted. Strange. A thought began to form as he set the mug back down. “Besides, You like Sophia.”

“Sure I do,” she replied as she righted herself, “but I could never give up something that juicy. Don’t worry, this isn’t the last you’ll hear of this, I wonder how it’d look embroidered on your pillow.” The withering look he shot at her did nothing to dissuade her from her musings.

“You know I only sent you to those classes so you’d have some kind of marketable skills. You’re good with your hands, this could have been a way to use that within the confines of the law.” Sewing and embroidery hadn’t been the only class he’d sent her to either. There had been a string of apprenticeships he’d tried to get her, but all of them had came back to him with the knowledge that his sister was singularly the most useless student they’d ever had the misfortune of trying to teach. He knew she was doing it on purpose, but he couldn’t bring himself to be mad at her for it. Well, not too mad anyway.

He shook his head to get himself out of his own thoughts. “What are you doing here at this time anyway, you’re supposed to be down at the shop.”

“Annalise took the day off, said something about her daughters pregnancy, I didn’t ask too many questions, you know, don’t look the gift horse, and so on.” Her grin didn’t waver, nor did she break eye contact with him. However he happened to know that Annalise’s daughter, Emilia, had gone into labour a week past, so Beth hadn’t been in the shop for at least that week. Ah, he realised, and the thought took shape.

He regarded her a moment, seeing if there was any slip with her lie. A rehearsed answer, he decided after a moment, as she wasn't normally this good at keeping a straight face when lying to him.

“Well either way I hope we didn’t keep you up too long last night, I know we can be a bit loud after a few drinks” Her eyes darted to the left briefly, before her face screwed up in the expected look of disgust.

“Gross, Jakob. I don’t need to be reminded of it.”

And there was the mistake.

“Aye it is, and if you were here last night you’d know that we didn’t make a sound last night since I fell asleep as soon as I made it in the door.”

Her face fell from being caught out in her lie.

“What gave me away?” she asked with a defeated sigh, slumping down into her chair, clearly expecting the lecture he was about to give her.

“Your eyes. You always glance to the left when you need to improvise a lie.” And after a beat he added “Also, Emilia had her kid a week ago”. She swore softly under her breath at this.

He fixed her with a stern stare. “But that’s besides the point, tell me you weren’t out with that gang again last night”. At this she cast her eyes, down to the table, refusing to meet his gaze.

“I told you I don’t like you hanging out with them anymore, we’ve got a chance to make something for ourselves and you seem insistent on throwing it away. And what are you doing? Stealing tea? Is that really what you’re going to risk this life for?” His had voice steadily risen over the course of his rant, and he found himself on the verge of standing up with anger.

“But I’m good at this” She snapped back, eyes meeting his defiantly. “I enjoy it. And you seemed to be fine drinking the tea until you knew where it came from.” She paused a moment, collecting herself. "And this way I can stay out of your hair, so you can stop looking after me. It's a win-win."

“A win-win until I have to bail you out of the lockup again, is that it?” His tone was more scathing than he had intended, and from the way she flinched he knew he had touched upon a nerve. Sighing heavily, he ran his hands through his hair in an attempt to calm his pulse down.

“Look, I’m going to go to work, and we can talk about this later. Would you at least go down to poor Annalise and see if she needs any help for the afternoon?” his pleading look clearly got to her, as she nodded curtly before turning her back on him, done with the conversation. With a shake of his head he turned to leave, but as he was halfway out the door he heard her call out to him one last time

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“You’ll never be like them, you know. You’ll always be scum in their eyes.” Pausing a second, he let the words sink in, before continuing out the door.

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Jakob jerked upright with a gasp, his body cold with a sweat and tremors wracking him every few moments. With a start he realised he was back in the twisted mockery of his city, empty and with black mists swirling all around.

Beth! Where was she? He cast around in a frenzy, desperately trying to make sense of what he’d just seen, and ground himself in his surroundings.

“Now now, none of that. You’ll get there, and if you rush it you’ll end up in a worse state than I found you” The voice caught Jakob's attention immediately, and his gaze found the first person he’d seen in days.

The man before him was… strange. Jakob found it hard to place what unnerved him about the fellow before him. A physically short man, he would have barely reached Jakob’s chin if he was standing, yet there was a weight behind his gaze that unsettled Jakob deeply. Light brown hair peeked out from under his flat hat A black overcoat hung loosely on his shoulders, clearly several sizes too large, and yet he seemed to wear it as if it fit perfectly. The longer Jakob tried to understand what he was seeing the worse his headache got, but still he stared in shock at the figure before him.

“I just saw- What was…?” His voice felt weak after disuse, but he croaked out a half formed question anyway, not entirely sure what he was asking.

“A memory, nothing more” The stranger responded, sympathy in his eyes. “And I’m afraid an incomplete one, you still have some work to do before the days end.”

“Yes, yes. That makes sense” Jakob was finding his voice now. “That was this morning, I had an argument with Beth, and I-I left? That’s right. I went to the Inn. Didn’t I? Why is it so foggy?” The confidence he had almost grasped fled from his tone, giving way to confusion and despair, and he turned the last question to the stranger with a searching look.

“You’ve been through a traumatic event, which was followed shortly by another occurrence that you weren’t prepared for. Normally you’d be allowed to remain scattered until you could pull yourself together, a natural formation, but I’m afraid that we don’t have the time for that at the moment.” As if to punctuate his words, a horrible screeching cut through the silence of the mists. The stranger turned his gaze away from Jakob for the first time since he’d awoken to scan the skyline.

“What was that?” The question came out meeker than Jakob had intended, and a sudden flush of embarrassment caused him to scramble to his feet. The Stranger didn’t spare him a glance now, still searching for something in the mists.

“Come, a walk will do you some good, and we should move before She finds us”. The Stranger broke the silence after a long moment, and after making sure Jakob had found his feet, set off down one of the streets at a brisk walk.

After taking a moment to decide whether to stay and see what the source of the noise had been or go with the strange man, Jakob followed after. Even with his head start, the height difference meant that it didn’t take long for Jakob to catch up. The fog on his thoughts made all the questions he wanted to ask pile on top of each other, but one stood out in his mind.

“Who are you?” The question seemed to amuse the Stranger, a small smile appearing on his face for the first time since the conversation began.

“Don’t you already know?” The question seemed almost mocking, mirth written on his face as he turned to Jakob, eyebrow raised and smirking. “Either way,”he continued, turning back to the path, “it hardly matters for now. Let’s focus on fixing you up and getting out of here”. His answer irked Jakob, but he could do nothing more than follow and hope that he was being lead to safety. Then hopefully he’d be able to find Beth and work out what had happened to the city. Then they could find -find -find -find -find -find -find -find Sophia. They could find Sophia and her father and then they’d - they'd - they'd -they'd?

“It’s okay, we’re almost there.” The Stranger’s voice was soft, all traces of the mocking tone gone. It took Jakob a moment to realise he had stopped walking in the street. Bringing his hand up to his cheek he felt the tears that were streaming down his cheeks.

“Where is Sophia? Why do I cry when I think of her?” He asked the questions, yet the look in The Stranger’s eyes made him terrified of the answer he might get.

“If you really want the answer, then look.” In the back of his mind, a part of him noticed that The Stranger had kept his hands in his pockets since they had first met, but now he pointed a gloved finger down the street. The Dwarven Rest stood in front of them, and as The Stranger clapped a gloveless hand onto Jakob’s shoulder it all became clear.

“Oh” Jakob said, and then he remembered.

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His blood ran cold through his veins and his heart pounded in his ears, but he didn’t slow for a moment as he tore through the streets of Dofen. The skies were blackened with dark tendrils and the screams of the city echoed around him. They had appeared suddenly, vast coils of roiling blackness spreading throughout the city. He didn’t want to think about what he’d seen of those poor people that had been plucked up by a tendril, or their lifeless bodies falling to the ground shortly after.

The horror he had felt when he saw what happened to them was soon eclipsed when he traced the tendrils back to their origins. The east side of the city. Where The Dwarven Rest was, and by association Sophia.

The logical part of his brain told him that she either made it out by now, or that there was nothing he could do, but that voice was quieted by the much more insistent voice telling him that she could be scared and alone and he wasn't there to comfort her.

He pumped his legs harder, forcing those thoughts to the back of his mind. He wasn’t sure he ever remembered a time where he had run this hard or for this long, but he paid his screaming lungs no mind, adrenaline and an urge to find her safely forcing his body past its normal limitations. After what felt like an eternity of running, but couldn’t have been more than three or four minutes, he turned the corner onto the street that the Inn was on.

“Sophia” the gasp left his lips as he beheld what was in front of him. A young girl stood alone in the middle of the street, maybe eight or nine years old. Black mists were streaming out from her back, reaching up to the skies to spread over the entire city and blot out the sun. Hovering in front of the girl, a tendril holding her form in place, was Sophia.

He was halfway to the pair before he registered his own movement, and another quarter before he was noticed by the child. A gasp of pain tore it’s way from his body as he felt a tendril halt him in his tracks. Looking down he saw a mass of roiling black mist sticking through his chest. His skin was unbroken, and yet he felt the his body pierced in a way he couldn’t verbalise, as if his entire being was being split apart. His feet slowly left the ground, and then he was carried towards Sophia and the child.

Now that he saw her up close, he could confirm she looked like an ordinary child. Large eyes stared up at him from under unkempt blonde bangs. And yet, her gaze felt empty to him for reasons he couldn’t place, as if she was a hollow mimicry of what a child should be. No empathy or curiosity sat behind those eyes, just a cold indifference to his existence. Yet she held her stare on him as he was held aloft before her, as if waiting for something to happen.

Tearing his eyes away from her, he focused on Sophia. Back arched, she was clearly in immense pain, and yet she made not a sound as she floated barely a meter from him. He yearned to reach out and comfort her, but he found it hard to move at all. She had a small smile on her face, eyes closed, she looked as if she was in a blissful peace. If he wasn't vividly aware of what was happening right now, he might think her asleep.

Suddenly, he felt a tugging sensation in his chest, as if part of him was being pulled through the tendril, and stretched unnaturally thinly. The piercing pain in his chest dulled, and darkness began to creep into the periphery of his vision. With a sinking heart he realised that this was the end. He was going to die here, watching his beloved have her life taken from her, afraid and alone, and he could do nothing to help. A small smile graced his face as he imagined what kind of joke Beth would make seeing him in this state. Probably something about him being impotent. She always was a bit too crass for her own good. He found that he accepting his fate came easy to him now. Maybe this is what Sophia was smiling about, the knowledge that it would soon all be over, and that they’d see each other on the waters of the afterlife anyway. That thought brought him comfort as he got ready to breathe his last.

NO!

What was he thinking, he didn’t want to die. His thoughts cleared suddenly, as if a fog had been forced from his mind. He had to take care of Beth. Had so much more life to live. His eyes snapped open, and he let out a hoarse cry as the pull on his chest lessened. Agony shot through his body, but he refused to give in. He was pulling back against the tendril, trying to save whatever it was that was being taken from him. But what little force he was exerting seemed to only be slowing the inevitable, and fighting back against it shot spikes of pain throughout his entire being.

“Stop now Child, before I am forced to act” The voice shook him from his struggle, and Jakob saw newcomers had appeared in the street. A pair of beautiful women stood not five meters away from them, seemingly unphased by the carnage happening around them in the city at large, or by the tendrils hovering above them. One wore a suit of ornate armour, sword drawn and pointed at the child. The other stood behind her a few paces, hands clasped in front of her, long flowing dress falling around her, and yet of the two she was the one with her gaze cast to the tendrils above. It took Jakob a moment to realise there was a shimmering dome surrounding them, holding the tendrils at bay. A Mage. Which made the woman with the sword an Aether Warrior. The thought filled him with a surge of hope, and he redoubled his fight against the pull, despite the pain that shot through him. He could be saved.

“But I’m so hungry” the first words of the child sounded strange to him, as if there was a beauty to them that he didn’t entirely understand, and that perhaps there was no wrong that could be done by her. For a moment he almost found himself sinking back into the state of blissful acceptance again, before panic broke him out of it.

“I will not ask again.” Her words cut across the enchantment that still lingered on his mind, and to punctuate her point she took a step forward. Suddenly the sky was filled with endless tendrils, all bearing down on the pair. A moment of panic fill Jakob as he saw them vanish from his vision, smothered by the roiling mass, but it was short lived before a burst of light pushed them all back. When the women came back into his view he saw something strange. Huge wings were spread out behind the two women, and for a moment time stood still.

“You overstep, ■■■■■■■” The last word she uttered came out warbled, and unnatural to his senses, and yet hearing it caused the darkness at the corners of his vision to blacken further, almost letting the pull overcome him.

“Sister” The first words of the second woman were as a warning, a look cast on her armour clad companion. The next moment happened so quickly he wasn’t sure what he saw. One moment the woman was a distance away, tendrils bearing down on her, the next he realised she had passed him and her sword was awash with a vibrant glow. The tendrils had been severed at the base, near the child’s back where they grew. All of this he registered in a moment, as in the next the pull on his chest disappeared completely. And like a bow that was overdrawn, taut with the drawforce until released, he felt something inside him snap back into place and continue the other direction.

The pain he felt before was nothing in the face of this newfound agony.

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Awakening from this vision was a calmer affair. Opening his eyes Jakob realised he hadn’t even lost his footing. Turning his gaze to the Stranger, he came to a realisation that had been bubbling at the back of his mind since he’d first awoken.

“I’m dead, aren’t I?” The look the Stranger gave him was searching, as if looking for something in his face that he couldn’t seem to find.

“No, not dead. At least, not quite.” The Stranger paused for a long while, perhaps considering his next words very carefully, wary of the impact they might have. Or maybe he was simply savoring the silence, his expression as unreadable as it had been all day. Whatever he had intended to say, he clearly thought better of it, shaking his head after a brief hesitation.

“Come, we have much to do.” With that, he turned away and walked into the mists. Jakob followed soon after.