Pain and shadows.

Yilas ran and ran like a mad woman, she wished she could have run faster but the pain from her ankle was preventing her from acting recklessly.

"How far did he go?" Yilas complained to herself out of frustration. The sun was up high noon, the heat was burning her translucent flesh. Her pale skin could not withstand this harsh weather, it had turned red on her shoulders, her forehead, and her nose. If she kept going without any covering it would most likely cause major sunburn.

Though in pain physically, Yilas had only one goal in mind. It was to find Mohsen. He shouldn't have been able to run this far off the forest in his current state but somehow her teacher managed to do so. Moreover, following the dirt track that looked like a trail, Yilas noticed signs of fighting in the trees and the ground. Mohsen must have put up a good fight with them because there would be the residue of blood along the way.

"Luckily I can pick up scent quite well in this body..." Yilas mumbled to herself as she sniffed the bloodstain and realized wasn't Mohsen's. "I have to hurry, he wouldn't be able to fight that many people..."

Dragging her purple ankle for another 2 hours before Yilas could finally see something from afar. At a branch of the tallest tree around, a little white rabbit was bagged neatly inside a hunter's trap. the rope trap was like that of a fishing net, tied the little animal in the tear-drop shape hanging from a tall branch.

Yilas's eyes caught the sight when she was still 15 feet away, but her mind had a general idea of what it was. Seeing the white rabbit covered in blood and cuts, it rolled into a ball so small that Yilas couldn't see the details of its injury but it was enough for her mind to consider the worst.

Yilas stomach dropped, somebody had squeezed her heart so tight that it was physically hurting. Her breathing had stalled and her body had frozen up. Yilas wore a shocked expression on her face, she couldn't believe what she was seeing.

"It couldn't be him, couldn't be..." Yilas mumbled to herself, trying to convince her heart from shattering into a million pieces.

Yilas ran closer, as fast as she could but along the way her legs kept messing up, it would loose its strength and refused to listen, making Yilas tumbled down many times. But even if she had to, she would have crawled to get there.

"Mohsen! Mohsen, get up!" Yilas moved like a lifeless ghost, she acted as fast as she could to cut the rope and let the rabbit down from the tree while constantly calling out to him. Yet no answers from the poor animal.

Untangling the rope, Yilas picked up a familiar scent, a scent that she wished wasn't belong to the rabbit in front of her. Within her arms, the white rabbit was cold and its body had gotten stiff, its body covered in wounds from head to toe but the one that caused its death was the slice across the stomach, some of the mushy intestines had fallen out as Yilas tried to hold it.

"Please, please, don't leave me..." Yilas panicked uncontrollably as she tried to use her hand as a band-aid to its stomach, refusing to believe the rabbit had died before she was even there. "Please, Mohsen, you can't die, I am here now, we can run away together..."

The sky above her darkened, clouds would chase one another and piled on top of one another just 20 feet radius from where Yilas was. One second ago, the sky was high noon and birds were chirping but now, it had turned into a storm. The only sound left was wind screaming ferociously like a wounded animal, desperately crying on top of its lung.

Yilas couldn't do anything to help Mohsen, she had let him ran to his death. Hugging his hard as rock body Yilas experienced a pain that she had never felt before. In her last life, when going through chemotherapy Yilas had thought if she could withstand that physical pain, she was invincible. However, nothing had prepared her for this moment, she had never lost someone so close and dear to her heart. And it was definitely beyond any physical agony she could imagine.

The pain blinded Yilas, she could only squeeze the rabbit's body and curled into a ball on the ground. She was unconsciously leaving her back open, not knowing someone was about to land their strike, attacking her from thin air.