Gan fought off dreams of his sister all through the night, she was screaming his name and wallowing in pain while a monster of undetermined shape or form tortured her in hideous ways. His nightmare kept his sleep from being truly restoring and when he woke he felt the rush of pain and weakness from his broken body hit him before he even opened his eyes.

When he did peel back his eyelids to see another day where he was still alive and the tower was still hovering over the wasteland's horizon, he also saw a stranger standing over him once again, but this time the man with the spear and bow, whose boots were tall and black and whose clothing was made from the furs of many different animals didn't disappear. Gan stared at him quietly from behind for a minute, taking in the strong arms and unwavering stance of the man. When Gan decided to speak, he was beaten to the punch. The deep and familiar-sounding voice of the man spoke first without turning to face him. "You're finally close enough to the piler for us to talk." Gan's mouth dried out, he tried to control his heartbeat as he spoke back at the man. "Turn around!" he demanded. The figure stood still. "There is no need for that." The man said. Gan rose up to his knees fighting the urge to reach out for the figure to see if he was real. "I need to see if it's you! it CAN'T be you Father!" The man just stood facing away. "GAN! there is no time for doubts. I need you to listen, you won't make it. You can't reach the tower you should turn back." Gan sucked in air, for some reason he felt as though he was suffocating. "Father I don't know how you are here, But Roanna she's been taken to the piler. Maybe... Maybe you can save her. I was only trying because there was nothing else I could do. Please turn around." Gan's hand reached to gently touch his father's rabbit fur coat, the last time he had seen that coat it had been drenched in blood. Now it looked as fresh as the day his mother had sewn the white fur together for his father's birthday gift. Gan remembered catching those rabbits, picking out the whitest ones, and skinning them as his mother had asked. But his hand went right through the fur feeling nothing to grip at all. It was as though his father was made of air. "I am nothing but a ghost Gan. I can not save your sister, and I can not save you. The spreading will consume you." Gan chewed on his own tongue staring wide-eyed at his father who would not even look his way. "I will not turn back father, There is no reason for me to turn back. I would rather die here than jump off the edge of the world when the spreading has ingested the whole of it. Please look at me, Father."

"Gan, you are speaking foolish. Were you not taught that every day is a gift? That surviving means hope. Not just for you, but for the world. My generation may god forgive us, is past, And has left yours with the burden of running away. That means you must live on, not for yourself but for the ones who can't." Gan had heard enough he stood and used his spear to lean on, his eyes never leaving his father's back. "I do not accept this burden. I do not accept this evil world, where life is worthless and monsters come to take children in the night. I know why it is that you will not look at me... I know I am a failure as your son." Gan picked up his pack from the ground while holding his spear in the crook of his good arm, he nearly lost his balance with his injured leg but kept speaking his peace to the ghost of his father whether it was real or just a hallucination.

"But I have decided the direction I will walk and I will not turn away from it. You do not need to protect me anymore Father. let the monsters come, My last wish is to take one more of them with me as I die." Gan could hardly believe his own mouth, his emotions were mixed. Part of him was scared and wanted to run away like his father asked, but so much more of him was resolved to continue his march, To die today if that was his fate. His words made his father's shoulders droop and the man let out a long breath before speaking again. "So be it, The only way I can protect you is to give you over to the spreading entirely. I have very little time left Gan. less than I need to tell you what you need to hear. And like you asked I will not keep the monsters away from you any longer." Gan could hear the sadness in his father's voice and the man seemed to be carrying an even heavier burden in death than the already weighty one he had carried in life.

"In truth Even if you had asked me to keep them away I don't think I could have. There are so many things you do not know. So much I can not tell you. But if you are to continue towards the piler then you must learn to siphon its power." Gan's father still standing with his face away from Gan, pointed one hand toward the plight of all men. That beam of white in the sky gave no answer to his wave, but Gan felt a stillness in the air that wasn't there before.

"Gan, you must reach out now and try to feel it. Try to feel the breathing." Gan could already feel something funny in the atmosphere, he wasn't sure what his father was talking about or trying to do but he knew his father didn't have long to explain, so he just "tried" to reach out. It came instantly, a feeling of evil. Perhaps it was his frayed nerves, or how close he already was to death, but once his father stilled the air and silenced... yes his father had made the monsters around quiet, there were no calls, no noises at all. everything was at peace. When his Father had brought peace to the very soil they stood on, Gan could feel the aura of hate. He dug into it with his mind and it shrugged him away with contempt. There were no words to describe the feeling, it was simply like he willed to meet with a force, and the force with a will of its own whispered it wished he was dead. But not in words or thoughts, in some other way. Some other spiritual way.

Gan's Father spoke with amusement in his voice. "You took to that instantly. I knew you would be strong but... never mind. You felt the malice, didn't you? It moved to block you." Gan nodded in a confused state of what was happening but realized his father was still not looking at him so he had to speak. "Yes, I think I felt what you are talking about. Where does all this Hate come from." It was so thick it felt like he could scoop into it with his hands. "It is the breath of the piler, The malice towards all things. You must never take it lightly for it corrupts even the minds of wise men. Now reach out with your will and touch it again, but this time grab onto it and pull. Pull until it screams, until it is forced into your body and threatens to overwhelm your mind with protest. Pull and do not be afraid." Gan wasn't sure if such a thing was wise but he trusted his father and so did as he said.

reaching out with a hand that only existed in his mind Gan touched the invisible shroud of hate that was all around him. And before it could answer his new trespass he wrestled it onto a hold and pulled with all the power in his will. Pain shot through his chest, the moans and screaming of something filled with bitterness blasted through his mind like a trumpet in a stone cave. Gan immediately felt like letting go, he didn't want this... "Thing" inside him. This hate was trying to kill him, he could feel it. Once inside his body, it began to pool in his lungs and block up his throat. Gan coughed and would have let go then if his Father hadn't spoken again. "Now, You must not let go!! If you do You will die." He said even as Gan already felt like he was dying. His body spasmed in a coughing fit, he was choking and couldn't breathe. "Gan use your will to split the power in two. Wish with all your heart to separate the hate and spite from its strength. To split the will of the power from the power itself. Render the malice from its own home and sunder it from entering again." Gan tried, he really tried to follow his father's instruction. As he always had from childhood until now. He had done his best to learn from his father because he knew it was the only way to survive. But now it felt like his father's instruction was trying to kill him. He used his will to hold the Hate in his lungs still and attempted even while turning red from choking, to split the substance down the middle. It wouldn't budge. The will of the hate was too strong. And from what he could tell there was no difference between the power and the hate. all he could feel was the hate and spite, and the will to kill him and everything he loved.

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"You must render it powerless Gan, or..." Gan's father wasn't even watching. Gan noticed even in his struggle against whatever he had invited into his body, That his Father's ghost hadn't even turned to face him. He was choking to death and his Father still would not look at him. The Spite from his own heart and pain it brought him only made his coughing worse. Hunched over and hawking up like a cat wheezing out a hairball Gan tried to split the power from the will of the power or whatever it was his father meant for him to do. The hate vibrated with rage in his esophagus and refused to bend or morph.

At last, Gan gave up. He was touching a force of which he knew nothing about, his father like always was asking too much of him, and he was prepared to die. But he didn't let go of the malice, instead he held onto it tighter. He decided bitterly that he would drag this evil even deeper into himself, so he pulled. He pulled the power that was choking him deeper into his lungs, and past that into his heart and chest. It didn't stop his choking, the Hate from the surrounding area flowed with his pulling replacing whatever he pulled out of his throat with more of the awful power. The force now within his lungs and heart began to ache and try to stop the very beating in his chest and arrest the blood in his body.

"GAN LET GO. I'LL TRY TO..." Gan's Father shouted over Gan's coughing. It seemed he realized Gan had given up dividing the hate from its power. But Gan didn't let go. Instead, his mind filled with old thoughts. Even while unable to breathe Gan began to remember how much he hated this world. How much he hated running away perpetually in fear of the tower. Always wondering if where he rested was safe or if he might die in his sleep... He remembered times he was truly happy. times when he thought Life was a gift and even in those times he remembered thinking to himself "I hope the tower doesn't take this away from me." He prayed every night that the little good he had in the world would stay with him but it didn't. Everything was taken away from him. This world, the tower, the evil he had seen in other men, men like those who killed his grandfather... He hated it. He Hated it all. With those thoughts and pain and the struggle of his body, Gan resolved that his hate would be even greater than the hate that was trying to kill him. His bitterness was more, his spite was even sharper and he resolved with every fiber of the soul that was slipping away from his dying body that he would hate the world more than the world hated him.

With that resolve, Gan's will crushed the Malice inside him. Both the will and the power of the spreading's hate were grabbed by the mighty hands of a terrible mind. A frightened, bleak, and hopeless mind whose only thoughts were of resolve. A single conviction which seemed at first to agree with the spite of the spreading, but in its clutches held an unbreakable difference. It wanted everything to be better. It hated everything, and it wanted everything to be better. To be... good. The will for a better life looked so similar to hate that it shared the same name, But the hands of this will in Gan's soul were like bricks of iron. They flattened upon the hate trying to kill Gan from the inside and left nothing but crushed spirit.

At once Gan stopped coughing, his body straightened back up and his heart began beating again. A wave of pain, sadness, and wooziness washed over him. The trifecta made him drop his spear and pack and sit down on the dirt again. "What now?" Gan asked. He could feel something inside him but it was listless and harmless from what he could tell. His father, still turned away and draped in skins with a mighty spear in one hand was silent. Gan Tried to feel out for the hate around him again but the moment he touched the malice it shivered and fled from him. The hate which had willed his death and still contained the wish for him to suffer was terrified of him. It refused to be near him and there was a place around his body where the aura of hate stopped, and left a bubble of emptiness. Gan only then realized that he felt more at peace now than he had ever felt in his life. Was that miasma of spite always dwelling in the air of the world? Even past the edges of the spreading? It was so thick here now, but Gan had never noticed it before. "However you did that... You must now accept the magic into your body. Let the power without the will, enter into your strength. enter into your mind, and into your spirit." Gan's father instructed after a long pause. Gan did just that, the power which now dwelled in him without any will was grasped easily by his own thought. And like taking in a breath he absorbed the substance into himself. "Did you say this was magic father?" Gan's father shook his head. "No, this isn't like the magic of the fairies Gan. This is something else entirely. I used the word magic because there is no other word to describe what it is. The fairies have authority over this world. They command things to be so and so they are. When they give power to mankind they hand over that authority like a General appointing a lieutenant it has been that way since the dawn of our world. The malice of the spreading is not of our world at all. I will not go into further detail but know that what you are doing when you siphon the hate from the piler weakens it. It takes something from the very spreading itself. The danger is then twofold, for the will of the power tries to kill you even as you take it inside yourself, One must never forget to separate the will from the power or they risk letting that unatrual hate into their very core and soul.' Gans's father spoke with the melancholy of a man who had seen such a thing take place. "And the second danger is the piler who can feel what you are doing."

Gan looked towards the hateful light in the distance and wondered if his father was implying the Spreading itself would try to stop him somehow. "What does this magic that isn't magic do?" Gan asked. feeling a difference inside himself but not knowing what it was. Gan's father began to fade away. The image of the strong man became ethereal and transparent like glass slowly fading as he answered Gan's final question. Gan mourned the leaving of his father he loved so much but held his heart firm. "The power is not worldly, it has no form or nature. For the piler, it spreads the hate you feel all around you, for some men it strengthens their bones and sharpens their minds. I have seen one young man light on fire but not be burned, and another clap his hands and summon thunder. You will have to discover what it is this power grants you. I have only two words of advice. Do not siphon more power than your spirit is ready for. And do not limit the power to what you know or understand. Goodbye, Gan..." His father was gone completely before his goodbye was finished.