Nineteen: Child Of Death.

Author's note: This is not a horror story. Stop disturbing us with your troubled past Sawyer.

**********

Sawyer's exhaustion ran deeper than mere physical fatigue. It was more than the relentless running, the endless walking, or even the brutal skirmishes that had left his body aching and his mind frayed. The weight pressing down on him wasn't just from the constant strain of keeping their fractured team together—it was the nights. The dreams. The recurring, vivid nightmares that left him breathless, drenched in sweat, and utterly drained.

Tonight was no different.

The dream was a maelstrom of violence. A battlefield stretched endlessly before him, a wasteland of broken bodies and shattered steel. The metallic tang of blood filled his mouth, thick and coppery, coating his tongue as if he had been drinking it. The air was dense with the acrid scent of burnt metal, the stench of charred flesh clinging to his skin. Somewhere in the distance, the agonized wails of dying men rose and fell, a ghostly chorus carried by the wind.

Flies buzzed incessantly around the fallen, their bloated bodies crawling over lifeless armor, drawn to the warmth still lingering in the corpses. Above, a solitary raven circled, its wings outstretched like an omen carved against the crimson sky.

He stood at the heart of the carnage, two swords clutched in his hands, their hilts slick with blood—his own, or another's, he wasn't sure. His vision swam, the world around him blurred and distorted, yet his own hands were sharp, in focus, too real. He was a faceless participant in the chaos, a mere specter moving through a massacre.

The battle raged around him, a frenzied dance of death. Figures clad in red and black armor clashed, their movements a blur of violence. The air rang with the deafening clang of steel against steel, each strike sending bone-jarring tremors through the ground. Bodies crumpled, their armored forms hitting the earth with sickening finality. Blood splattered against his skin, warm, sticky, seeping into the fabric of his clothes.

The noise was unbearable. The screams. The clash of blades. The death cries. A relentless, deafening assault on his senses. His head throbbed with a searing pain, a pressure so intense it felt like his skull might crack. He clamped his hands over his ears in a desperate attempt to shut it out, but it was futile. The sounds pressed in on him, suffocating, unrelenting.

Then, cutting through the madness, a voice.

Soft. Clear. Familiar.

"My love."

Sawyer turned sharply, his breath catching.

She stood there, untouched by the battle raging around them. A woman of impossible beauty, her presence a stark contrast to the carnage. Her eyes, the color of the deep sea, shimmered with an unnatural luminescence. Waves of rich, earthy brown hair cascaded down her shoulders, catching the dim, blood-red light. Her ears, long and delicately pointed, hinted at something beyond the ordinary—something otherworldly.

His heart stuttered in his chest. A sudden, inexplicable longing coiled in his ribs, tight and aching.

"Do you still have the headaches?" she asked, her voice gentle, filled with quiet concern.

She reached up, brushing her fingers against his cheek with a tenderness that made his throat tighten. The warmth of her touch spread through him, grounding, familiar in a way he couldn't explain.

She acted as though they stood in a world of their own, oblivious to the war crashing around them. The screams, the dying, the blood—it all faded into the background, as if reduced to a mere whisper.

Sawyer's breath came unsteady. He blinked, his mind reeling. Unlike the shifting, blurred figures of the battle, she was in perfect focus. Too sharp. Too vivid.

This wasn't just a dream.

It was something more.

A memory. A vision. An intrusion into his consciousness that he didn't understand.

And for the first time since the nightmares began, Sawyer felt something deeper than fear.

He felt watched.

"I will be fine," he replied, though his voice felt distant, hollow—an echo lost within the vastness of his own mind. He wasn't entirely present. He never was in these moments. It was as if he were merely an observer, a spectator watching himself from the outside, detached from the pain, from the weight of his own actions.

He had grown accustomed to this feeling. The eerie sense of being adrift, of walking through these visions like a ghost haunting his own memories. He had learned not to fight them, not to twist the dreamscape into something it wasn't. He let it play out as it always did—unfolding before him like an unchangeable story, one he was powerless to rewrite.

"You don't have to overwork yourself," the woman standing before him murmured. Her voice was soft, but there was something beneath it—a quiet, almost chiding note of concern. "You know we will win, right?"

She was close now, close enough that he could see the way the firelight caught the strands of her hair, the deep blue of her eyes shimmering like ocean waves under moonlight.

"Clara, I am king," he responded, though the words felt strange leaving his mouth. They carried a weight he wasn't sure belonged to him, a regal authority that settled on his tongue like a foreign taste. "The empire depends on me. I will save them all."

Clara lowered her gaze, her expression unreadable as her long hair fell forward, hiding her face. The silence stretched between them, thick and heavy, as if the very air had conspired to hold its breath.

Then, as he began to turn away, she caught his hand.

Her grip was firm. Unyielding. Different.

The softness in her features hardened into something else—something unrecognizable. The warmth in her eyes dimmed, replaced by an emotion far colder, far sharper. A gold dagger gleamed in her other hand, its polished surface catching the dim battlefield light.

Sawyer barely had time to react before she drove the blade into his chest.

A sharp gasp tore from his throat, a sound too raw, too real for a dream.

The pain was immediate. Excruciating. Fire seared through his ribs, white-hot agony radiating outward as the blade sliced through flesh and bone. The illusion of the dream shattered in an instant. This wasn't a nightmare. It was something worse. Something alive.

His breath hitched. Blood pooled in his mouth, thick and metallic, coating his tongue before spilling down his chin. His knees gave out beneath him, his vision tunneling as his body struggled to comprehend the betrayal—the sheer impossibility of it.

"You couldn't even save our own daughter," Clara whispered. But her voice was different now. It was devoid of affection, stripped of the tenderness it had once carried. Instead, it dripped with contempt, venom curling around every syllable like a noose tightening around his throat.

Sawyer's mind reeled. Our daughter? The words didn't make sense. They couldn't make sense. And yet, they settled into his bones with a terrifying finality, wrapping around his collapsing world like chains.

He tried to speak, but all that escaped was a choked gurgle, blood filling his lungs, drowning his voice. The battlefield around him blurred at the edges, the figures in the distance melting into dark shadows.

Clara's fingers reached into his armor, searching, until they closed around something small. A keychain. Ornate, old, its significance lost to his fogging mind. She pulled it free and slipped it around her neck, the delicate chain vanishing beneath the collar of her armor.

With a brutal kick to his ribs, she sent his body sprawling.

Sawyer hit the blood-soaked ground hard, his limbs weak, the cold creeping into his bones faster than he could fight it. His head lolled to the side, his breath coming in short, shuddering gasps as the weight of it all pressed down on him.

Clara loomed over him, her expression unreadable.

"The Red Army now belongs to me," she said, her voice steady, absolute.

The battlefield roared behind her—the clashing steel, the cries of the dying—but her words cut through it all like a blade.

She took one last lingering look at him, her lips pressing into a thin line. Then, with a quiet, almost pitying sigh, she turned away.

"I pray you burn in hell, King Edward," she murmured.

And then she was gone, swallowed by the chaos.

Sawyer's vision blurred further, darkness creeping at the edges of his mind. His body felt heavy. Distant. Like it was already slipping away from him.

King Edward.

Our daughter.

The words rattled inside his skull, relentless and cruel, as his world faded to black.

"The king is dead! The king is dead! Retreat!"

Her voice sliced through the battlefield, rising above the deafening clang of steel, the agonized screams of the dying, and the distant roar of fire consuming what was left of the empire's banners. It was a declaration, a death knell, and a victory cry all at once.

The flag bearers moved swiftly, their grim faces pale beneath the streaks of blood and ash. They flanked her without hesitation, forming a protective shield around her as they pulled back, navigating through the chaos with a practiced efficiency that spoke of years of battle-hardened discipline.

Yet even as she gave the order to fall back, her lips twisted into something unnatural—a smile, cruel and triumphant, though tears streamed freely down her cheeks. They mingled with the streaks of dirt and dried blood on her face, a grotesque contrast to the flickering sorrow in her eyes.

"The king is dead," she whispered again, softer this time, as if saying it aloud would finally make it real.

Behind her, the battlefield shifted. What was once a cacophony of combat became something else—something quieter, eerier. It was the sound of defeat settling over an army like a thick fog, of men realizing their leader was truly gone.

Sawyer felt none of this.

He was beyond it now, barely clinging to the edge of consciousness as unseen hands dragged his broken body across the blood-soaked ground.

He could hear the dull, rhythmic thud of boots retreating, the clang of dropped weapons as soldiers abandoned their posts in disarray. But the sounds felt distant, as if they belonged to another world—one that had long since moved on without him.

Then, without ceremony, he was tossed aside.

He landed hard, the impact jarring his already mangled frame, forcing a sharp, gasping croak from his lips. The air left his lungs in a painful rush, but before he could gather the strength to move, the weight pressed down on him.

Cold. Heavy. Unforgiving.

Bodies.

Lifeless, naked corpses—heaped in a grotesque pile, limbs twisted at unnatural angles, flesh pallid and already stiffening in the night air. The stench was overwhelming, a thick, cloying mixture of rot, blood, and burnt flesh that turned his stomach.

He tried to push against them, to free himself from the suffocating press of the dead, but his limbs refused to obey. Every movement sent a fresh bolt of pain through his chest, a searing, unbearable agony radiating outward from the wound.

His heart.

Something was wrong.

"Wait! Wait! I'm not dead!" His voice was a hoarse whisper, barely more than a breath. His throat burned, raw from blood and dehydration. His lips cracked as he struggled to form words, but the effort was wasted. No one was listening.

A strange sensation drew his gaze downward.

It took his mind a moment to register what he was seeing.

There, just below his sternum, where flesh should have been whole—where his heart should have been—was a cavity.

A dark, empty void, jagged at the edges, torn open as if something had been ripped from him.

A strangled, gasping sound escaped his lips—more a sob than a scream. His fingers trembled as he reached for the wound, pressing against the slick, gaping chasm, half-expecting to feel the familiar thrum of life beneath his touch.

But there was nothing.

No heartbeat.

No warmth.

Just emptiness.

He wasn't breathing anymore. Not truly. He was aware of the act—the inhale, the exhale—but it felt artificial, as though his body were going through the motions without any real need to.

The realization sent a fresh wave of panic crashing over him.

Then, a voice.

Soft. Haunting.

"What is wrong, Father?"

His head jerked upward, his vision swimming as he searched for the source of the voice.

And there she was.

A child. A girl. Standing among the dead as though she belonged there.

Her hair was long—too long—cascading down past her feet, flowing like dark water in a way that defied gravity. Her eyes, a vibrant, unearthly blue, shimmered like fractured glass, reflecting something he couldn't understand.

She was Clad in a long, black dress that seemed to almost absorb the light around her, the fabric clung to her small form, flowing elegantly down to her ankles with delicate ruffles that swirled in soft, haunted layers. The dress's sleeves were puffed at the shoulders, giving it an ethereal, almost Victorian air, but the simplicity of its design only added to the eerie quality of her appearance. The neckline, adorned with a lace trim, hinted at something once soft and innocent, now contrasting with the strange and ominous aura she carried. Her feet were encased in delicate, black shoes that barely made a sound, moving as if she were part of the shadows herself.

But it wasn't her face that made his breath stall in his throat.

It was what she held.

In her outstretched hand, resting in her small, delicate palm, was his heart.

Still beating. Still alive.

Pulsing weakly, struggling against the inevitable.

A thin trail of blood dripped from the organ, sliding down her wrist, staining her pale skin with a grotesque contrast of red against white.

She tilted her head slightly, considering it, before her gaze lifted to meet his.

"You watched me die," she said.

Her voice was devoid of anger. Devoid of anything, really. It was flat. Hollow. A statement of fact, not an accusation.

Still, the weight of her words crushed him.

"You killed me and watched me burn, didn't you?"

Something in the air shifted.

A slow, creeping heat.

The bodies around him began to change. Their flesh darkened, charring as if licked by unseen flames. Smoke curled from their skin, the scent of burning meat thickening the air until it became suffocating.

His breath came faster, shallow and desperate.

The girl stepped closer.

"You called me child of fire, and burned me alive," she whispered.

Her skin blackened as she spoke, the pale smoothness peeling away, layer by layer, revealing charred muscle and brittle bone beneath. Flames licked at the edges of her dress, crawling up the fabric, consuming her but leaving her untouched all at once.

Then, slowly, deliberately, she reached out.

Her fingers, blackened and crumbling, found his.

The moment they touched, the fire erupted.

It didn't start from the outside—it started within him.

A violent explosion of agony tore through his body, fire rushing through his veins, scorching him from the inside out. His vision blurred, the world turning to searing white light as the pain swallowed him whole.

He screamed.

It was raw, primal—an animal caught in a trap, a soul being wrenched apart at the seams.

And in the distance, beneath the roar of the flames, he swore he could still hear her voice.

Soft. Unrelenting.

"Burn with me, Father."

**********

"Sawyer! Sawyer, fucking wake up!"

The voice ripped through the suffocating fog of his nightmare, dragging him up from its depths with relentless force. He gasped, his body convulsing, limbs jerking violently as if he were still ensnared in the horrors of his dream. His breath came in ragged, desperate bursts, his mind clawing at the last vestiges of that burning world, trying—and failing—to separate reality from the terror still gripping him.

"Sawyer!" The voice was insistent, urgent. Hands clamped down on his shoulders, strong and unyielding. "Look at me! Look at me!"

His wild gaze darted upward, colliding with two familiar faces: Sarah and Mark. Their expressions were tight with concern, their eyes wide with fear. Mark's grip on him was firm, as though anchoring him back to reality, while Sarah hovered nearby, her fingers twitching, uncertain whether to reach out or recoil.

His chest heaved as he sucked in air like a drowning man breaking the surface. Sweat slicked his skin, his damp hair clinging to his forehead in thick, tangled strands. His pulse pounded violently against his ribs, a deafening drumbeat that drowned out the silence of the night. His fingers twitched, then moved instinctively to his chest, pressing against the solid weight of his sternum.

Still intact. No gaping hole. No missing heart.

Real.

This was real.

He let out a shaky breath, his entire body trembling. It took several seconds before he found his voice, hoarse and raw. "I'm fine now," he rasped, though the unsteadiness of his words betrayed the lie. "You can let me go."

Sarah and Mark exchanged a wary glance, a silent conversation unfolding between them. A heartbeat passed before Mark finally released his grip, the tension in his fingers reluctant to fade. Sarah pulled back but remained crouched beside him, watching him closely, as if expecting him to shatter at any moment.

Sawyer sat up, running a hand through his damp hair, the motion doing little to settle the turmoil within him. He swallowed against the dryness in his throat, trying to steady himself. The scent of charred wood and lingering smoke filled his nostrils, an uncomfortably close reminder of what he had just endured.

"What happened?" he asked, his voice quieter now, more controlled. His eyes swept over the campsite. The fire had burned low, little more than embers now, barely clinging to life. The flickering glow cast jagged shadows along the ground, creating the illusion of shifting figures in the darkness.

He shivered.

Not from the cold, but from something deeper. Something raw and unsettled, clawing at the edges of his sanity.

"We should be asking you that," Mark said, his voice laced with lingering concern. "You were talking in your sleep—no, not talking, more like murmuring. It wasn't English. Hell, I don't even think it was a language I've ever heard."

Sawyer stiffened.

The words felt familiar, though he couldn't recall speaking them. They echoed in his mind, slippery and distant, like a forgotten melody just out of reach.

Slowly, his gaze drifted back to the fire. The smoke curled upwards, twisting and unfurling in a way that seemed almost deliberate, as though unseen hands were shaping it into something grotesque.

The burning bodies.

The child with the long, flowing hair.

The flickering glow of the dying embers cast an eerie light over the clearing, and for a brief, horrifying moment, Sawyer swore he saw her standing just beyond the fire's reach—her eyes bright with a knowing gaze, her charred fingers still outstretched toward him.

His hand shot to his palm, his fingers brushing over the mark—the place where she had touched him, where she had left her claim upon his flesh. A phantom burn lingered beneath his skin, deep and unshakable.

"Blessed by the flames," he muttered. The words slipped from his lips before he even realized he had spoken them.

Sarah and Mark froze.

A heavy silence settled between them.

Sawyer swallowed hard, forcing himself to push through the lingering fog in his mind. He exhaled sharply, shaking his head as if to clear the remnants of the nightmare clinging to him. "But being burned wasn't fun," he added weakly, his voice barely above a whisper.

Mark's eyes narrowed. "Sawyer, are you alright?"

There was something in his tone—something more than simple concern. A hesitation. A flicker of unease.

Sarah had the same expression. Her gaze wasn't just watching him—it was watching past him. Beyond him.

Sawyer's stomach twisted.

"What?" He turned sharply, his body tensing, his senses sharpening as he followed their line of sight.

Then he saw it.

Destruction.

Not just destruction—carnage.

The air was thick with the acrid stench of burnt metal and scorched earth, an oppressive heat still radiating from the ground. The remains of the military base—once a stronghold, now a shattered relic—lay in utter ruin. The skeletal remains of buildings stood at odd angles, their frames twisted and broken as if some invisible force had torn through them with violent precision.

The ground itself was scorched, blackened beyond recognition, the earth cracked and brittle beneath layers of ash and soot. Fires smoldered in the distance, their orange glow casting an otherworldly hue over the devastation.

The landscape was warped, distorted.

Reality itself felt… wrong.

Sawyer took a step forward, his boots crunching against the brittle remnants of what had once been solid ground. His breath hitched. The weight in his chest—the same weight he had felt in the dream—pressed down on him once more.

This wasn't just the aftermath of an attack.

This was something else.

Something unnatural.

And deep in the pit of his stomach, in the very marrow of his bones, he knew—

This had something to do with him.

"Sooo, you've been having these dreams, right?"

Sarah's voice was low, serious, a stark contrast to the usual teasing lilt she carried in casual conversation. She eased down onto the sand beside them, her posture tense but open, the flickering firelight casting sharp shadows across her face.

Sawyer exhaled, pressing the heels of his palms against his temples as if trying to physically hold himself together. The exhaustion in his voice was impossible to miss. "Not just dreams," he murmured. "More like… messages. Glimpses of the past, or something. I can't explain it."

Sarah was quiet for a moment, her brows drawing together in thought. "I see," she said at last, though her tone made it clear she didn't fully understand—not yet.

Sawyer barely heard her. His gaze had drifted once again to the wreckage around them, his mind grappling with the sheer scale of destruction. The once-familiar desert landscape had been utterly transformed, twisted into something unrecognizable.

The sand, once golden and soft underfoot, was now a scorched, blackened wasteland, hardened into jagged, glass-like formations. Some dunes had melted into smooth, undulating waves of obsidian, their surfaces gleaming under the moonlight with an unnatural, molten sheen. Others had fractured into brittle shards, like shattered pottery scattered across the ground.

It wasn't just fire. It wasn't just heat.

It was something else. Something unnatural. Something terrifying.

His throat tightened.

"I did that?" The words left his lips barely above a whisper, as if speaking them too loudly might make it all real.

The silence that followed was heavier than any spoken answer.

Sarah didn't say anything. Mark didn't either. They didn't need to.

Their lack of denial was confirmation enough.

A cold weight settled in his stomach, despite the residual warmth still radiating from the earth. He wasn't just some stray caught in the storm—he was the storm.

His hands clenched into fists. The questions came fast, one after another, colliding and piling up in his mind, each one worse than the last. How? Why? What am I? What am I becoming?

He lifted his gaze, staring out at the horizon. The vast emptiness of the desert stretched before him, endless and quiet, but it no longer felt like a place of solitude. Something was out there. Waiting. Watching. A presence that prickled at the edges of his awareness, just beyond his ability to define.

Then—

BING.

The soft, electronic chime cut through the tense quiet, snapping his attention back to the present. He turned to Mark, who was staring at his palm with wide-eyed focus. A holographic map flickered to life above his skin, its translucent lines shifting as the device processed new information.

Then Mark grinned. "I got it!" he announced, triumph clear in his voice.

Sarah let out a breath, the tension in her shoulders easing slightly as she stood. She clapped Mark on the shoulder in a rare show of praise. "Finally, you've proven yourself useful," she said, her smirk returning, though the relief in her tone was genuine.

Mark rolled his eyes but returned a weary smile. "Oh, please. I've been useful plenty of times."

Sarah raised a brow. "Mmhmm. Sure."

Sawyer barely registered their exchange. His mind was still spinning, his thoughts still tangled in the weight of what had happened—what *he* had done.

"We need rest," Sarah declared, shifting back into her no-nonsense leadership mode. "Tomorrow, we're moving out."

It was a simple statement, but it felt heavier than it should have.

Tomorrow, they would leave this place.

Tomorrow, they would step further into the unknown.

The thought should have been reassuring, a chance to move forward, but for Sawyer, it was anything but.

Because no matter how far they traveled, no matter how many miles they put between themselves and this ruin, there was one inescapable truth:

He couldn't run from himself.

As the others settled in for the night, exhaustion finally pulling them into restless sleep, Sawyer remained awake. He volunteered to take the first watch, though he knew the real reason he couldn't close his eyes.

It wasn't just the fear of an ambush.

It was the fear of himself.

He kept his distance from the fire, afraid that if he sat too close, his presence alone might reignite the flames into something uncontrollable. The air still held the heat of his earlier outburst, a ghost of power lingering beneath the surface. The desert, usually freezing at night, was strangely warm.

A cruel twist of fate—his destruction was the only reason they weren't shivering in the cold.

His gaze drifted toward Sarah and Mark, their sleeping forms illuminated by the moon's pale glow. They trusted him enough to sleep beside him.

But should they?

His fingers drifted to his palm, tracing over the mark—burned into him by the child in his dream. It was no longer hot, but it felt permanent, an unseen weight pressing against his skin.

His throat tightened.

"What kind of power am I holding?"

The answer lurked at the edges of his consciousness, unspoken.

And he wasn't sure he wanted to know.

**********

The morning brought no peace.

The sun had barely begun to rise when disaster struck.

"Run!"

Sarah's voice rang out, sharp and commanding, cutting through the arid morning air like a whip.

"Run faster!"

Sawyer's breath came in ragged gasps. His chest burned, his legs screamed in protest, but he forced himself to keep going. The world blurred around him—sand kicking up beneath his feet, jagged rocks slicing at his ankles, the dry air scalding his throat.

"I'm trying!" he wheezed, but his body was already at its limit.

They had wandered too close—too deep—into dangerous territory. What they had mistaken for a series of scattered dunes had been a nest.

A Reaper nest.

Mark had been the first to recognize them. He'd barely managed to get out two words—"Oh, shit."—before the creatures had emerged.

They were unlike anything Sawyer had ever seen.

Tall, predatory, moving with a lethal grace that sent icy fear coiling through his gut. Unlike the massive, lumbering Kamalians—beasts they had learned to avoid—these Reapers were organized, moving in perfect formation like a hunting pack.

And they were fast.

Their black, leathery wings stretched wide, slicing through the air with frightening ease. Their elongated beaks gleamed in the morning sun—razor-sharp, hooked at the tip, built for one thing. Tearing flesh.

Sawyer didn't need Mark's horrified explanation to know what that meant.

He ran harder.

Their only advantage—if it could even be called that—was fire. The creatures avoided flames, or at least, burning embers. But that single, fragile defense placed the burden squarely on Sawyer's shoulders.

After last night's display—the charred, glassed-over remains of the desert around them—it was clear that he was their only real weapon.

And that terrified him more than the Reapers themselves.

"Anytime now!" Mark called out, his voice strained with barely-contained panic.

"I'm trying!" Sawyer shot back, frustration flaring alongside his fear.

He ducked beneath a low-hanging rock, scrambling out on the other side where Sarah and Mark were already crouched, their eyes wild with fear.

"You see that, right?" he added, chest heaving.

"Ehm… maybe try harder?" Mark suggested, his voice a mixture of forced calm and genuine desperation.

Sawyer turned to glare at him. "Oh, really?!"

"Look, you were the one who said magic was sealed in the desert in the first place!" Sawyer retorted, eyes flicking between Mark and the rapidly closing Reapers.

"Yeah, well, that was before you burned half the desert last night!"

"Mark, less talking, more fire encouragements!" Sarah snapped, her tone edged with urgency.

One of the Reapers peeled away from the group, banking sharply toward them. Its wings folded in, beak angled like a spear as it dived straight for Sarah.

"Sarah, watch out!"

Sawyer moved on instinct.

He grabbed her, yanking her down just as the creature's talons sliced through the air where her head had been.

A pulse of something hot—something raw and hungry—surged through his veins, rolling over him like a wave. His vision darkened at the edges, his limbs turned weak, his knees buckling as if all the energy had been drained out of him in an instant.

Then—

A shriek.

Not from Sarah.

From the Reaper.

The creature's body ignited midair, twisting violently as it crashed to the ground in a smoking, charred heap. Its blackened wings spasmed once, twice—then stilled.

The stench of burned flesh filled the air.

A stunned silence followed.

Mark was the first to break it.

"That's what I'm talking about!" he exclaimed, his voice filled with relief. Then, casually—"Oh, Sarah, your hair is on fire."

Sarah let out a growl of frustration.

"That's Commander to you, puny giant!" she snapped, swatting at the flames with her bare hand. The fire sputtered out, leaving only a singed patch of her usually pristine hair.

The sharp, acrid scent of burnt hair curled into the already foul-smelling air.

She gave Sawyer a look.

Sawyer winced. "Uh… sorry?"

Sarah exhaled sharply, running a hand through her ruined hair before shaking her head. "We'll deal with it later. Right now, we need to move. More could be coming."

Sawyer swallowed, still reeling from what had just happened. The feeling of power draining from him… the raw force that had answered his call without warning…

What was happening to him?

He didn't know.

But the fear curling in his gut told him he wouldn't like the answer.

**********

Notes: Next chapter update will be on Tuesday 15th April.