Epilogue
When she awoke, everything was over. A hideous stench yanked her back to consciousness. She sat up to find herself on a grassy plain teeming with charred corpses.
“Urgh... Why...do I live...?”
She distinctly recalled being swallowed by flame. By all rights, she should have been turned to ash, yet she could feel no burns, only the dull ache of blunt force trauma echoing within her body.
“Finally awake, I see.”
A man leaned down to address her. His appearance was curious, to say the least. He was dressed all in white, with a strange mask over his face. He squatted in this world of death like he was its natural denizen.
“And who are you?”
Her eyes flashed in an attempt to intimidate the man, but in the end, it was she who was shaken by his uncanny presence. Sweat beaded on her forehead. Her body trembled with fear. It felt like he was leeching her life away, carving through her soul as easily as he might her flesh.
“I’m glad you seem well. If you’d died, all of her efforts would have been for nothing.” The masked man’s power crackled on her skin with every word that passed his lips. “Two paths now lie before you.”
She said nothing.
“You can wait to rot away on an old battlefield or pick yourself up and seek out a new one.” Now, which will you choose? He looked her up and down, appraising her.
Her throat grew dry. Her lungs screamed for air. Silence dragged on between them.
At last, the masked man let out a sigh. “I know decisions can be difficult. But once the choice is made, everything will be so much easier.”
Slowly, slowly, he raised his arms. She flinched away, but he only scoffed.
“No need to be so twitchy.” With his hands on either side of his mask, he stepped silently closer. “Do you desire rebirth? Or a final end?”
He removed his mask, revealing his face.
Her mind went blank. Raw fury sprang unbidden to her lips. “I’ll kill you if it’s the last thing I do,” she spat.
“Then I will give you hope.” The man’s smile was menacing in its innocence.
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