I turned around to my friends. They were all safe. I turned back towards Lilitha. She was gone, completely disappeared in the consuming chaos. Rage filled my body, but I kept myself in check. I grabbed Jake's corpse, and lifted him up. A tear fell down my eye as I looked at the lifeless body in front of me, but I did not feel a thing.

"Uhm.." Stephanie spoke this time. "Are you ... really Miss Anna?" I turned around to face them. Everyone had their weapons drawn and turned towards me besides Stephanie and Arin. I nodded in agreement.

"You look so... different." She went on. "The Anna I know wasn't so... evil." I questioned her, wondering what I really did look like, but alas no words came out.

"Anna. Is that really you?" Zach got closer to me.

"It's her." Arin spoke this time, being held up by Alec. I got a good look at him now that the fight was over. His armor was battered and broken. "We should go, this is not the place to do this. Malphas retreated to Molten Keep, and that's what is important right now." Arin tried to change the subject.

"We can't take her with us." Zach said. "She ... isn't Anna anymore." I wanted to shout to him, exclaiming that I was still me! But I couldn't say anything. My voice was completely gone. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't change anything.

"I disagree." Arin said. "Anna, are you still in there?" he asked me again. I shook my head yes.

"How can we trust her?!" Zach shouted.

"Because she's Anna!" Arin exclaimed back.

"Ladies Ladies," Alec chimed in. "We should get going now, we can deal with this back at Crosta." I nodded and began to follow Alec. Julie and Zach walked next to each other. Zach didn't trust me anymore and I wasn't sure why.

We began to make our way out of the cave. Nothing attacked us anymore now that Circe was dead. Arin knew where we had to go next but we needed everyone to recover. Many people were injured and Stephanie couldn't just heal us all. We arrived at the Caravan, and Grayson transformed into his familiar form in order to take us back to town. He was tired, but Julie consoled him on the way.

The ride was quick, uneventful, and it looked to me like everyone was extremely exhausted. I was wide awake, and sat away from everyone. They did not want to be near me and I couldn't really understand why. I wasn't sad at Jake's death anymore. The more I thought about it, the more I began to question if I could feel anything at all.

My magical aura leaked off me and filled the air like smoke. The magical energy disappeared just as fast as I would create it. I took off my gloves and looked down at my hands. My veins were glowing, just like they would when I crushed cryo-catalysts, but instead of a teal, the color was a deep black. I tried to take a look at myself, as I wondered why everyone had been so afraid of me. I touched my face, my skin felt normal. My eyes were stuck open very wide, and only closed when I blinked. My hair ... it was black at the tips, but that couldn't be the reason they were afraid of me. It had to have been something, something I couldn't quite grasp.

I took a deep breath in, focusing all of my new magical energy into the center of myself. I felt it condense as if I was filled to the brim with water, and it was finally falling into a drain. I looked back down at my hands, the black blood crawled back as the energy dissipated. My hair turned back to it's solid gold color as it partly covered my already terrible vision.

"Guys?" I said. I began to smile, and then I began to cry, I began to weep and sob. Stephanie turned towards me.

"Anna? Are you ..." She noticed my tears and hugged me.

"It ... hurts." I sobbed, Zach came over to sit next to me.

"Glad to have you back, shortie." He joked, hugging me as well. Arin mustered his armored self towards us and hugged all of us. Julie looked back from the caravan at me, and smiled.

"I am pleased you are back." Arin said.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

"I .." I said through tears. "I never left, I just" My pain and anguish turned to rage quickly.

"I wanted to save everyone... not kill them. I didn't want to hurt them." They stopped embracing me, and sat on the bench in the back of the caravan. "I made ... a contract." Arin looked up at me, fear in his eyes.

"With ... who?" Arin said slowly.

"He called himself... The ancient of the abyss." I sobbed. "I just wanted to save everyone ... I didn't want to become that. I didn't want to hurt anybody." I wiped the tears away, attempting to calm down.

"Contracts can be made to grant power in turn for specific things..." Arin went on, fear still crippling his voice. "I assume he took your voice, your ability to communicate." Everyone in the caravan suddenly understood what had happened.

"Yes. Exactly." I stopped crying, and the pain from all of this loss, the heartbreak. It hit me like the same freight train that killed me. I calmed down, stopped shaking, and just sat in that caravan as my world fell apart.

"That was Jake wasn't it?" I asked everyone, my voice dead. "He really killed himself, came here to find me, and then I killed him." I reiterated. Nobody responded, how could they.

"Now what?" I asked, staring down at my shoes.

"Now we kill Malphas." Arin said.

"Why? What's the point..." I trailed off. "Who cares about killing Malphas and returning home when I have nobody to return back home to. I should just ... die." I said, slumping into a depression.

"Anna." Zach spoke this time. "The Lords of Terror aren't just stealing the energy from Earth, they are stealing the energy from Tracia too. Everyone will die if we don't stop them." Zach cracked his knuckles to de-stress himself. "To be honest, I don't have anything to go back home to either. But this is my quest now and-"

"You never had anything to go back to! I did! So don't you try to fucking lecture me!" I snapped.

"Lady Anna, you don't need to argue with him." Arin chimed in. "He is not here to antagonize you." I looked up at Arin, and for once I couldn't tell what he was thinking. I couldn't see the emotions behind his eyes. I looked directly at him, and I didn't even know who he was anymore.

"Hey .." Zach said. "It's okay. She's right. I shouldn't be lecturing her."

"Please, just for this fight." Arin said. "Please help us. I'm begging you." My eyes widened at Arin's sudden generosity and emotional expression.

Silence. A wave of silence wiped over the caravan. Arin reached both of his hands behind his helmet, and slid his hood down. He took off the metal protecting his face to reveal the cloth that I had seen him in before.

"Why?" I asked.

"You asked if I had ever been in love." Arin remarked, remembering our past conversation. "I grew up with a beautiful girl ..." He began taking the cloth off of his head from the back. "Her name was Skylar, and she was everything to me. We trained together, lived together, and died together." He took off the mask, revealing his chiseled face and gray hair for the first time. He had a bright red scar down his left eye.

"So please ... Anna." He choked back tears, remembering his lost love. "Please help us. Don't help us kill Malphas, help us avenge the girl I loved." Seeing Arin's face filled with so much emotion surprised everyone in the room. I nodded in agreement, and he put his hood back up to hide some of his face. I was stunned, I had lost my motivation to live, but Arin again had sparked in me something incredible.

"I-" I started to say. "I will help you."

"Don't use it." Arin said coldly. "Don't use the Abyss Power. Don't become his wraith. Don't become one of his pawns." I started to respond but Arin interrupted me. "I was there, I have a contract. I took power, and I hurt so many people." Arin started to break down in the caravan, I could feel his emotions radiate in my soul. "As long as I draw breath, don't use it, ever again."

"I ..." I began thinking about the power and how good it felt. "I won't use it. I won't give into it." I promised him, staring at his darkened and chiseled face. Arin's face.

"Why?" I asked. "Why did you take off your helmet? I thought it was against your guardian code."

"Avenging my lover is more important than any code." Arin said looking up at me, his orange eyes glowing with energy. "Why else would I have even joined the guardians to begin with?"

The other guardians looked away from him. I turned towards them. "Why don't you guys need to wear helmets?" I asked. "Why just him?"

"To put it simply Lady Anna..." Alec responded. "He's a demon." My eyes widened as Arin didn't flinch at this.

"What?!" I exclaimed, but it was as if everyone had already known.

"I'm of the Archon dominion, and I'm well over 100 years old." Arin said, looking at me from under his hood.

"But you look human!" I shouted.

"Looks can be deceiving," he said, activating his aura for a second. His teeth grew longer and ears grew pointier before he turned off his aura, returning to a normal state.

"W-what?!" I shouted, "That's ..." I was speechless.

"I'm surprised he never told you." Stephanie muttered. "He told me the day I met him."

"Arin?!" I questioned.

"It wasn't important for you to know." he said. "This isn't what we should be focusing on. Anna's power, my race, none of it matters. Malphas will be at Molten Keep inside Lavoros. We need to fight him there. Let's get back to Crosta and regroup. We can talk about all this nonsense after I kill Malphas." Arin's aura sparked, causing purple flames to radiate from him and the shreds of armor he was wearing.

"He's right. The Lord of Terror should be our main goal right now, we can talk about the rest of this after we've dealt with them." Alec spoke, and I nodded, understanding what needs to be done.