Dren’s life was pouring out of him.

“I can’t let it end here,” he had lost too much blood. It was getting harder to focus. That thought alone demanded all his energy.

“There must be something I can do to stop that monster,” Dren was the only one left alive that could stop him. Every other member of the Rebellion was already dead. Killed at the hands of the Emperor’s men mere minutes ago.

Dren would soon join them…But not before the Emperor’s Inquisitors had their way with him.

The memories of torture arrived long before the Inquisitors set foot near him.

Agony tore through Dren, his mind was flooded with pain. His fingernails were being slowly pulled off to have red hot needles shoved into the viscera where the nails had just been.

Recollections of the most brutal horrors that could be inflicted on a man overwhelmed Dren’s senses. He was back there again. Being brutally tortured.

“These memories aren’t mine! They didn’t happen to me!”

But it felt so real.

“I can’t die yet. I WON’T DIE YET!” this was the one thought that kept Dren from going insane from the agony that threatened to rip his mind into shreds. He held onto it like a man clinging onto flotsam in a tsunami.

As his mind was assaulted with another wave of memories, these ones of having the bones in his systematically dislocated and then being confined to a cell too small to lie down in, realization came to Dren. “I’m a Giver. There’s still hope!”

The planned formed in his head. It was hard to think at all and black started to pepper the edge of his vision, but if he didn’t act then the rebellion would die and so would his nation. They would dance their way to their deaths.

The blackness grew.

Dren summoned his ever leaking reserves of strength and focused. Before he died Dren would send his memories into one of the Inquisitors that were torturing him to death. It was a risky gamble. One that would take all that he had and kill him in the process, but it was the only roll of the dice that he had left.

He let go of his mental walls. He let the Inquisitors have their way with him.

A horrific scream tore through his ears, causing a sharp pain in them that was just a tiny gnat in the avalanche of misery the Inquisitors heaped on him. It took Dren a second to realize it was his own voice making the horrid scratchy sound.

By focusing only on the Inquisitors mental defenses and leaving his mind and body unguarded, Dren knew he was signing his own death certificate, but if he could write his memories onto the mind of one of those memory mages killing him, the tiniest grain of hope may survive.

His own screams felt like they’d cause his ears to bleed, and his vision was increasingly dark, but still Dren focused his whole being into remembering everything he could about the impostor, remembering how he’d destroyed empires under the guise of a savior, how he feasted on the death of nations.

Dren prayed to whatever being ruled the universe that his final actions would be enough.

It had to be enough.

The Inquisitors were Givers just like him. If they realized the truth, they could fight. They could save the nation. They were Vealand’s last hope. Givers like he and the Inquisitors were a dying breed. He’d been among the few who’s bloodline had survived the great purge nearly twenty years before his birth. Every other Giver he’d known was either long dead, or had just been murdered not more than five minutes ago.

Dren felt the last of his life slipping away. He could barely think. He could barely do anything. His head was filled with cotton and his vision had gone almost completely black.

He had to share his memories now, or the future would die with him.

Using the last bits of strength he could muster, Dren released his memories. Any second now there’d be a spark of recognition in the eyes of one of the Inquisitors. There’d still be hope.

Nothing happened.

Everything he’d done had been in vain. He’d let the world fall into darkness.

Everyone was damned.