Light forced itself into his mind, red in tinge. Opening, looking into the world, the sun—so clear, so alive—burned into his skull. Never had he seen something so red and furious look him in the eye. The clearing had truly become clear for the first time in ages, a sight to behold by all means.

Though the scenery, or lack thereof, was far beyond a sight to behold—a sense of falseness held it all together. The air tastes of sulphur, thick when drawn in. Trees that rose still were bare and white, bark torn and shattered among the floor’s needles. Leaves smouldered against stray rocks, a false snow traveling on updrafts of heat. Yet, it didn’t feel particularly warn, nor was anything beyond the coals familiar.

“What on earth—” Xevla questioned aloud, caught in a both confusion and white wires. The vines that bound him in that structure had already burned, although their strength persisted.

He tried to think, unable to focus on one thread of questions as they rapidly began to swarm. What had he done? Is this reality? Is this the clearing? Where had the stone gone? Where was everyone he loved? Panic would be a good word for it, Xevla, trapped inside himself, unmoving—yet running from it all.

As if to answer the endless questions boring their way through what lived of Xevla’s consciousness, from the earth sprouted a beast more pure than the whites of a new fawn. Cracking the fragile earth, tendrils and sects of a beauty more bestial than any description sprawled build upwards.

As her stature developed, Xevla felt a draining of his person, a swelling of the tongue. While affixed to the earthen floor, what seemed to her a pitiful excuse for the post-man began seemed to fuse with the silent observation of nature. Though there was elegance in the pearls of color, the bones that built her patchwork legs, the ribs of many adventures composing a misshapen and unloved cage. They all held together with the playing of molded bark and intrusive vine, the bright glow of the sky fading into eyes more dead than a shot crow's.

In that gaze, he was entranced--unable to escape the looks of an empty skull. Though expressionless and hollow beyond means, a soul unidentified looked back unto Xevla. Locked there, drained of thought, life flew into her figure. As if to answer the questions lingering at the back of his throat, she spoke within him, speaking so sweetly, "I always knew you'd try and find the light—seek now the perfect world they’ve hidden."

It was as if the earth around him had become a careful embrace--whitened, aged tendrils mothering a proper captive. Though rigid, she continued, "There was always purpose in this--you found it, that light, are you to bring it to your world? They're still attached to their shadows and safety."

Though unable to answer, hardly able to process, those words settled in the back of his mind. Somehow, there was a fundamental lack of knowledge--something was missing, something was off, yet it felt right, "It was always meant to be you, Xevla—you were meant to be significant, it was always you; do you accept the contract?"

As dead as her ribs' components, the air had such a foul and repugnant taste to it. Suspicion dripped from the sounds pouring inside him, yet Xevla found not the will to force choices, or consider them at all. Yet as he regained that conscious, the lack of conditions dawned upon them--though not before hands were forced, and the world was set in motion. As the final echo of her offer came, this divine beast of mortality's carvings, that rosy stone reappeared before him. So obtainable, as if the reds of the sun had been born before him in the soul of a stone. There wasn't a way he could say no, even if he'd found the power to speak.

"You will bring the light to the others, won't you? You mustn't listen to their refusals. No one can understand,” it was as if, with that bit of acceptance—the love for that little journey that he'd taken, that Xevla unknowingly signed it all away.

"You only have so much time to find your way to where it ends, follow the dark, and make it yours, Xevla; you were born a reliquary—" released partially from his bindings, the young post-man was guided by enamored thoughts and a tease of infatuation, silks of beyond pulling fingertips into the core of that very light before the beast.

"Xevla, call to me, do you accept prophecy? Xevla—" it seemed to bark, as they touched, urgency and familiarity alike flooding the wood. Bones crumbled and vines snapped. Mists thickened, and so would the rose-tint swarm his sight. Body loosening with the soil, shaken free by a new voice, "Xevla!"

The hands of an older man gripped his shoulders, Zolta being readily discouraged as she screamed into his face. He was home, in that minor sleeping quarter--with more company than he'd ever ask for. Sun poured in through the gaps in structure, the doors, and the vent above the firepit. He didn't feel quite alright, sore in places he'd never felt pain before, "What in heaven's name were you thinking? Going to sleep in the grass like that! Look at all the little bites you've got!"

She badgered him, though with half-lidded eyes, the sound of her half sarcastic concern was not something he had the mind to focus on. What was it, that he had done?