We appear in the room the Messenger summoned us to yesterday. The rancid, rotting smell that crosses my nose nearly makes me puke. Luckily, I swallow it back down before I hear the Messenger moving behind us. Valene and I turn toward him and kneel.

“Please, rise,” the Messenger says with what sounds like amusement, but it’s a muddled gurgle in his throat. We look up at him. I thought he was bad before, but man, this time, he truly looks like a walking corpse. His skin is speckled with black goo and translucent; I can see his muscles moving underneath. His hair is patchy, and the hair he does have is pure white, as are his eyes. I gag a little, but catch myself. “Are you okay, Kyle?” he asks.

I compose myself. “Forgive me.”

“Please, no need for excuses. This human husk is so pitiful, unable to contain true power without burning out. I would have the same reaction if I were in your shoes looking at this. I am happy that you have found your way back here. I was worried that you would not.”

“Of course, it is our duty,” Valene says.

“Glad to hear it. Now please, follow me.” He takes us down the long corridor filled with the leaky pipes. Steam belts from them every few seconds.

With everything that’s been happening, I never thought to ask where this place is. We’re underground in a sub-basement, that’s for sure. Probably in The Core somewhere. We come to a threshold leading into an open area. Unlike when I was here last, it’s bright. It’s the same place the rally was held, but with everyone gone, there’s a tension in the air that I hadn’t noticed before.

“Watch.” The Messenger snaps his fingers. The tension in the air disperses. The floor rumbles, then fire bursts to life in a huge circle before us, taking up the whole floor. The fire fizzles out, leaving a five-pointed pentagram and other symbols within the lines of the star. At each point of the star is an object of some kind, no bigger than a doll. “I need you two to stay here and protect this place with your lives while my men and I run a few errands.”

“Will we be the only ones?” Valene asks.

“Yes, will that be a problem?” Valene shakes her head with a slight bow. “Good. I’ll be taking my leave. Good luck,” he says with the creepiest of smiles and vanishes.

I look to Valene. She makes a circle with her pointer finger. Walk the perimeter. We split up and walk opposite ways around the circle. This room looks way bigger now that a huge crowd of demons isn’t stuffed in here. Wires and pipes line the wall. Some of them lead to the corridor, but others have been cut and bent, like they’ve been disconnected from something. Machines of some kind were probably installed in here before.

There are a couple of rusted metal doors along the wall as well. All of them have secured padlocks. I look up at the catwalk. There is a door up there as well, but it looks damaged from down here. Then there’s the large ventilation grate on the ceiling. There’s no other way out of here aside from shadow walking.

I turn my attention to the pentagram and the objects at each of its points. At the tip of the longest point is a small, bronze container the size of a mason jar—the soul catalyst; I recognize it from the night I saw Leo. The closer I get to it, the more I feel the staggering amount of energy emanating from it. It’s a little nauseating, so I don’t linger near it long.

Not far from the catalyst, at another point of the pentagram, is a totem or statuette. The body looks like it’s made of tarnished gold, and its eyes are rubies. It shimmers in the fluorescent light, but the light coming from it gives me chills. My chest aches as I walk by it. This thing looks so familiar for some reason. Its eyes seem to follow my every move. Creepy.

“Hero?”

Startled, I jump back and step on something. A terrifying energy washes over me, creeping up my leg and body until it wraps around my neck. “Thus, it begins again. Our return is nigh,” says a voice in a sinister whisper. The energy grows tighter, and I’m growing light-headed. A hand grabs my shoulder, disrupting the energy. My legs give out from underneath me, and I fall to my knees, gasping for breath.

“Hero, are you okay?”

“What happened?”

“You touched that thing and spazzed out.”

I look at the statuette. “It spoke to me. What are they?”

She looks at me with worry. “They are what’s left of the generals after their defeat at the hands of Shadow.”

“Wait, you mean this whole thing was about summoning the Generals?”

She nods. “Yeah. They’re all here.” She points to them. “A statue made of wood, with the face of a wolf: Bane. One of sandstone with rainbow gems for eyes: Dusk. One of marble with an iron spike through its heart: Masini. And finally, one made of blackened gold with ruby eyes.”

“Beal,” I say, still rubbing at my chest.

“You know about them?”

“From nightmares, I used to have.” She looks at me, confused. “Long story. How did the Messenger find them? Surely things like this would have been hidden away.”

“Who knows. Father said after the destruction of the army, the light took them. No one should have known where they were.”

Clearly someone did. “So, I guess these are the targets of your father’s plan.”

“Yup. Father and his team are going to infiltrate this place and take them away. All we need to do is play our part.”

“Protect this place with our lives.”

She nudges me. “Everything will be fine.”

“If you say so.”

We continue to patrol the room. I’m bored and on edge all at once. I’ve counted the spots of mold on the wall four times now. How long has it been, an hour or more? Over on the other side of the circle, Valene is pacing. I walk around to her.

“They should have been here by now. Something has gone wrong.” There’s a rumbling noise, then the room starts to shake. From the vent above us comes a roar. “That’s pretty far away.”

“What was that?” I ask.

“No clue, but whatever it is, it’s big.”

Suddenly, the air grows stale and gross. Something slams onto the grate of the ventilation shaft, and it falls to the ground in a plume of black dust. The cloud clears, revealing a man dressed in all black, wearing a ski mask, a thick leather belt, and a medium length sword—a bastard sword—with a bronze leather bound hilt in a sheath at his hip. He looks around and steps forward. From the vent, eight others drop down next to him. All are in black with ski masks and are equipped with a variety of weapons.

I move closer to Valene. “Valene, are they ours?” I whisper.

“Not sure. I wasn’t given complete details on who or what to expect.” She steps forward. Black energy radiates from her hands. As she grips it, the energy lengthens and forms into long daggers. “Who are you?”

“Followers of Gaia,” the lead guy says in a monotone voice.

Valene relaxes a bit, but my stomach hasn’t stopped doing flips since they appeared. I look them over. Upon closer inspection, I notice they are trembling and breathing heavily as if they’re in pain. Liquid steadily drips from their hands onto the ground. The crimson color shines in the light as it begins to pool at their feet. Blood. “Valene, something’s off.”

The first guy steps forward, drawing his sword; the blade is already stained with blood. He lifts his mask from over his mouth, and brown sludge drips from his lips. “We are the followers of Gaia who have failed, and now, living is agony,” he says with a disturbing smile. He rushes Valene, prepared for a vertical slash. With just a slight turn to the side, she easily evades him and plants her foot right into his face.

There are crunching and snapping sounds as he tumbles across the floor like a rag doll. He comes to a bloody stop, his limbs twisted in unnatural ways. She turns, facing the others, but they haven’t budged. “Agony.” We both turn to see the leader standing again, broken and twisted, but still with that smile. He’s the kind of monster that killed my parents. It brings back images of the thing outside of my room. Valene moves back next to me.

“This is the Messenger’s doing. He’s controlling them,” I tell her.

“But how did he know about us?”

“Your friend, Magician, told me a lot in his death.” Our gazes snap up to the catwalk. The Messenger casually leans over the railing, picking at the rotting skin on his face. “He didn’t tell me anything about the rebels I didn’t already know, but he told me about himself. His favorite places, foods, and people. Imagine my surprise to find out that his favorite place was a suspected rebel base, and that his favorite cousin was Valene Kir. So, I decided to pay your little friends here a visit. We got to talking, things got out of hand, and as you can see, we had a little fun. Well, at least I did.” The guy Valene kicked hobbles back over to his sword and picks it up. “Now, let the fun continue. Get them.”

Slowly, the group starts forward. A purple aura covers their weapons as they ready them. The guy Valene struck down rushes us. He swings his sword, slashing horizontally from the left. Valene steps forward, bringing her right dagger up, blocking his strike with an explosion of power. She brings her other dagger around and, with minimal effort, slices through his neck, decapitating him.

There is a snap of energy as his head flies through the air and lands in front of me. My vision blurs as my stomach twists. You would think already seeing a severed head would have prepared me for this. Nope.

“Kyle, get a grip!” Valene’s voice snaps me back to reality. “Here they come.” She pushes the body away.

Her daggers dissipate, and she picks up his sword. Her golden energy pulses up her hands and into the blade. She dashes into the group, wielding the sword. She cuts three of them down, cleaving them in half at the chest. Two of them step to the outskirts of her range and continue toward me. I clench my hands to stop them from shaking. Okay, Kyle. Okay, here we go. I swallow the bit of puke that has crept up my throat and put all my focus into channeling energy throughout my body.

The two of them pincer me, coming from my left and right. They brandish spears that glow with that purple aura. In unison, they lunge at me. My hands burn as all my energy surges into them. I manage to catch the spear on my left and deflect the other away from me. I twist the spear around, and with as much strength as I can muster, snap the blade off the end.

The two lunge for me again. With a side kick each, I knock them away from me. Then, my feet are swept out from under me, and I hit the ground. The remaining spear glints in the light as it comes at me. I roll to the left, dodging it, and it plunges into the floor. Rolling back, I take the spearhead already in my hand and slice through the staff before they can pull it back. Taking the other spearhead in my right hand, I roll to my feet and get into a fighting stance. They regroup next to one another, examine their broken spears, and look at me, then at each other. Okay, still alive. Keep it up. I can do this.

The purple aura still surrounding their staffs starts to shift. It stretches out from where I broke the spearheads off and replaces the points with long, solid blades of energy. Okay, round two.

They rush me one at a time. One strikes low at my legs, while the other follows up, striking high near my chest and head. They’re trying to keep me off-balance, and it’s working. I can’t seem to get my footing. I manage to deflect the deadlier strikes, but the small cuts have accumulated, and I’m covered in blood. This is the weirdest time to be having déjà vu, but I am.

I plant myself, and they both lunge at me, aiming right for my heart. At the last second, I sidestep the joint strike, wrap my left arm around the spears, and with a quick jerk upward, rip the spears from their hands and up into their chins. Keeping my momentum, I spin, bringing the butt of the spears across their faces as hard as I can.

Their heads have done a complete one-eighty and are facing backward. Apparently, I don’t know my own strength anymore. They wobble on their feet. Instead of falling, the two of them turn, facing one another, and grab each other’s heads. With a few loud cracks, they slowly reorient themselves.

“Oh right, you’re technically zombies.”

I look past them to Valene. She kicks one of her opponents with a roundhouse kick so hard and fast that a huge dent appears in the left side of his chest. He drops dead, brown-tinted blood pouring from his mouth. That’s right. If these guys are the same as the monster that killed my parents, the only way to stop them is to destroy their hearts and stop the blood from pumping.

With one more sickening snap, my opponents are back in fighting condition. They prepare to attack again. Just thinking about killing them makes me queasy. Even if they are already dead, it feels wrong to entertain the idea. They rush me again, now only with their fists for weapons. They attack high to low interchangeably. I dodge and parry their strikes easily. Fighting hand to hand against these two is like fighting a kid doing the windmill. They’re nothing compared to Valene or Jason.

My back hits a wall. They gear up for their final strike, and slow-motion sets in. I can see an opening near each of their throats. Energy surges throughout my body. It concentrates around my hands and radiates up my arms, making my skin crawl and burn. The energy begins to solidify, becoming hard. Before time normalizes, I step forward between them, take ahold of their necks with my black bone claws, and dig my fingers in deep into their flesh. They struggle against me. I take a deep breath to calm myself and swallow back bile. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. Our death is freedom,” one of them says.

“This life is agony. Please,” the other says.

I close my eyes and yell as I clench my claws into fists. I tear through their flesh like squeezing clay through my fingers, until I hit and crack cartilage and bone. They drop to the floor, and I open my eyes to the sting of tears forming. Their brown blood pools everywhere while they lie there with content smiles under their masks.

God. What did I just do? It hurts to breathe; I feel sick, and I can’t stop shaking. I look up to see Valene still fighting. As she fends off one zombie, another comes up behind her, ready to attack. Crap. I run past the bodies and up behind the attacker. Without hesitation, I drive my claw into his back, take hold of his beating heart, and crush it before he can stab her.

Valene spins around, swinging a broken sword. She stops just shy of taking this zombie’s head off when our eyes meet. The look in her eyes is fierce—a look I’ve grown accustomed to while training with her. In an instant, they soften as she looks me over. “Thanks, Hero.”

I pull my hand from the zombie’s back. “You’re welcome.” My stomach tightens and heaves; I finally puke.

Valene rubs my back, trying to comfort me. “Get it all out, Hero.” The sound of clapping echoes off the walls. We look up at the Messenger, who has amusement written all over his rotten face. “We’re not done yet.”