The car continued speeding down the middle of the road.

The disgusting smell of burnt tires made its way through the broken back panel and windows. The vehicles' flickering led lights cleared the view up to a couple of meters forward.

The road looked clean so far. He was safe.

Still. for some reason... The reflection. It wouldn't lift off him.

Elgan's eyes darted to the rearview, carefully scanning his own battered appearance.

'That's not it... Something is definitely off.'

The reflection's stance was cold and primitive, similar to that of a starving madman... His body was unmoving like a stalking predator. Dirt covered his visage, while a mixture of dried blood and sweat bathed his lips.

And yet, even in that pitful state. His gaze remained inexplicably focused.

Eyes narrowed, Elgan only spared him a couple of glances at first. Memories back from high school came back to life for some reason. His philosophy teacher used to say the eyes were a window to the soul.

Only now did he manage to understand the meaning behind that sentence.

Unconsciously holding his breath, Elgan's stare dove through his own eyes.

He had an expectation for what to find inside already. Elgan was pretty introspective, he knew himself very well for someone... his age.

He knew who he was inside. A lonely, frightened kid, shaped by the continuums of a meaningless life. A kid hidding inside the remains of the shattered armor that used to protect him.

That was what Elgan naively thought he would find.

He was wrong.

Beaten up, swollen, broken, bloody, scarred. The list of words that could be used to describe him was almost as long as the dictionary itself. Yet somehow defeated wasn't one among them.

Elgan had just survived an encounter with nightmares... He had gazed down hell with his very own eyes. The distant burning the flames that haunted his hometown still burned.

Right now, he should be... Horrified, hopeless, lost... Suicidal.

Yet he wasn't.

Giving up? Losing faith?

Elgan was not mistaken. Within those lifeless pupils that looked back at him, there was something off. Something bright, small, yet powerful. Powerful like nothing that he had seen.

A green-burning ember.

It was strange to muster or try to comprehend. But despite being reflections of the same person. The Elgan that stood in the real world, was vastly different from the one who gazed back at him from the mirrors.

His stance was slow and worn out. As if burdened by embodying an infinity of fates. His eyes were glassy, almost those of a corpse. Yet within them hid fire of deep wisdom. One he couldn't muster.

As the car advanced in the nothingness of that lifeless road, their gazes danced in a furious, yet silent clash.

Eventually, the reflection's lips parted. What could only be described as a burnt, yet deep tone of voice permeated the insides of the car. Seemingly muffling down any other sounds.

"Where are you going?"

It was a question that came out of his mouth.

"Where are you running away exactly?"

Running... Away?

For a few seconds, that question seemed to puzzle him. For some reason... be it madness, or tiredness, Elgan answered his reflection's question.

"Of course, I am running away."

So obvious.

What he had seen, was a towering colossus nesting on the insides of... What was no a wrecked field of flames. There were titans, roaming the concrete, sending quiet earthquakes along the earth as their sharp, amorphous limbs dragged them in search of blood.

He had just woken up in the most insidious, grotesque nightmare he could muster to imagine...

"Yes, I'm running."

He repeated. The slight shakiness in his voice vanished.

Elgan's gaze moved to the outside for a second. It had been half an hour since the lights of the city faded in the distance... It was a complete and utter void outside. The stars and moon were still nowhere to be seen... The celestial dome had been kidnapped by whatever other nightmares lingered in the- darkness.

Elgan's heart staggered. Suddenly, the emptiness he perceived outside shattered, not by light, but by the gazes of myriads of tiny, starving eyes.

Eyes gazing from the sides of the road.

...

Then they vanished. As if they had been nothing but a mere deception of his own mind. They were gone.

It all happened too fast for Elgan to do anything, but hold his breath in panic.

'This is reality... Elgan.'

The reflection uttered, instantly attracting his attention back to it.

"I need to get away from here. I must find help..."

It was perhaps, too much of a burden for him. His subconscious begged for a dead-minded task. All thought, all attempt of using logic on his current situation was futile.

Elgan was being haunted by a mad colossus and its lesser titan, he was being driven mad by his talking reflection, he was somehow buried deep underground in a field of tombstones, yet he was alive. He-

He needed to away.

That's what he had to do. Clenching his jaw, Elgan's feet pressed even tighter against the car's throttle, the vehicle started burning hot black smoke, but Elgan didn't care. He was alone, and he was dead. The reason was not something he could afford.

"With that wicked power... Your own fears will kill you, fool."

Watching his actions unfold from the mirrors, the reflection's voice turned somber.

Their eyes met again. Only this time, it was the reflection staring at a rabid animal. It was not his fault though... The mind had been inactive for close to four centuries... It was bound to have rotted in some ways.

"So be i-"

Before the reflection could utter any more words, Elgan punched the glass it existed on in an impulsive attempt to kill it.

His bloodied fist pulsates with freshly drawn crimson. The mirror had burst. The voice died down...

Sadly, Elgan was not the only one in control. Responding to the other will inhabiting that mind, the soles of his shoe pushed against the brake in a rush, uncaring about any consequences.

"What?!-"

With the smell of plastic and incandescent asphalt leaking in from the outside, the car spun out of control for a few seemingly eternal seconds before stopping completely just a few feet away from the edge of the road. Elgan sat paralyzed in the driver's seat, his hands clenching anything near him.

His head still spinning, trying to process what just happened, trying to understand the reason.

As a dying shard of glass brushed past his ear. A whisper...

"This is the last I can do for you... Mom, Dad."

Like a bucket of cold icy water, Elgan's thought process stops, as if keen on letting him absorb the meaning of those words.

The car stalled, then it halted. Miraculously not falling down the side of the road.

"This city fell in a single night... Elgan. They are all dead, but you."

His words faltered.

"I don't care... Whatever you choose. Don't forget them."

Then, the voice vanished into that lone road. Never to be heard again.