I learned a harsh lesson that night. I learned why most cultivators didn't dare to sleep. Magic has a ways of reminding us of our hubris. One of them is the curse of prophesy.

A burning Hansa Village awaited me, pale fire was burning lazily and slowly, like the sap that flowed from a hurting tree.

Sheep skulls grinned at me as their coat of ash that faked the wool they once wore when they were alive, as in mockery. The skeletons of the main hall and school grotesquely warped as if angles don't matter in this nightmare.

The oak, the center of our Village was alive and a burned husk at the same time, hurting my mind and soul just by looking at it. Yet the only thing that was in any form or shape whole.

I was unable to control my movement and like a puppet on strings shuffled to the one place I desperately didn't want to see.

I went home.

Three mangled Corpses awaited me. Playing cheerfully and silently and the faint laughter, like a lifetime away could be heard.

The smallest of the corpses hugged me. It was burned badly with only half of her little face still somewhat human looking.

My little sister Ahlia said.” Don’t be sad Ghali!”

She skipped towards the door of our house that hung on its last leather hinge; flames licking from the inside. She then turned around, waved and said a little “bye!” that was sounding endless far away before she entered the waiting inferno.

My parents were waiting, their arms slung together like the happy couple, they seldom had the time for when they were alive.

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The grim wariness and leg troubles that plagued my father were gone as was the tiredness of my mother, they both seemed younger and full of vitality, in stark contrast to what i could see.

My fathers Body was marred with cuts that showed the bone and a Arrow stuck in his shoulder, while mothers clothes were ripped, her skin bruised and her throat slashed.

She tried to say something. But couldn't. Blood and gurgling sounds was the only that came out that gnarly wound. She shrugged and hugged me softly.

Father came, his arm, cut to the bone, came forward and tussled my hair.

“I am proud of you, remember that.” He simply said showing a rare smile.

I managed to ask “How do I prevent this?”

“You can't.” He said moving back reaching around mother’s shoulders. ” Otherwise you wouldn't be here.”

They waved me a goodbye and moved away, laying on the floor and stopped moving after they passed their final words to me.

Their eyes were now broken and they seemed older.  Faces full of pain and fear.

A faint farewell could be heard. It was the voice of my Mother.

I stood there frozen, unable to control myself; I turned towards the vilage center. I felt something calling for me.

I made my way fowards, the sickly pale green sky had no sun and blackened skeletal flying mouses and birds flew backwards trough the sky like black flames, a mockery of the once vivid red and yellow colors that painted the mornings of my village.

I then realized that the flames that ate the houses like hungry ghosts were flowing backwards.

The whispers of the dead could be heard echoing in my mind. Whispers and the screams of terror.

Moving forwards they grew in number. They grew more urging. I even started to recognize some of voices cursing and begging.

I couldn't control my movements. I was staring straight ahead; straight at my destination.

The Oak that stands in the village center changed from a burnt dead stump to fresh like springtime and all that lay between, ever changing , no, twisting and never quite the same no matter how hard you looked.

It seemed less real than anything else in this strange world and yet..

It was beckoning me, calling me to come, to face my destiny, no my doom, with a perverse sense of glee.

I was about to touch that cursed Tree with my trembling hands...