As she was tied and pinned, as she saw his robe fall away to reveal his nearly naked body beneath, her struggles kicked up a level. Her frantic efforts rubbing the skin around her wrists raw.

As Nastasia struggled, she cried out. "Please don't do this! If you want that whatever energy then just take it, there's no need to go this far."

The man sat in front of her, lifting her by the waist to sit her on his lap, facing him. Pulling at the sash holding her robes together, he tossed it aside and pulled her skirt down to her hips. His hands brushed up her smooth, flat stomach before his fingers rubbed at the lace of her bra.

"The only way to give it to me is by giving me a child." He murmured as he rubbed her body. "It's like taking out an organ and transplanting it into another body. The body has to compatible or it'll fail. I've tried it countless times with the previous one. Mine or hers, there wasn't a body that could hold them. Not even our own to each other's."

He slid his hand under her bra and grabbed her bare breast. "You see, darling, the only way is for you to obediently lie here until you give me a child."

Throughout this, the voice, Xianmei, had been trying to get Nastasia to calm down. To listen to her. To repeat the words that needed to be said, but her mind was too taken by panic to hear the voice in her head.

'Listen to me!' she cried as loudly as she could to surmount the girl's panic, 'he's not able to do anything if you just-'

"Then what about me," she cried out, desperate to put an end to this. "If you put-"

Both their words cut off as he leaned forward to grab the nipple he freed from her bra in his mouth. He bit down after suckling it and she stifled a light startled shriek as she bit her lip to suppress it. After he released the pink dusted nipple from his mouth, he said his threat in a sing-song sort of way.

"No more words or I'll gag you."

Xianmei was chilled to say nothing of Nastasia who struggled to kick him off of her with her lower body. This, however, only resulted in him grabbing her legs to grind his hardened crotch against her. 'Why,' Xianmei thought as a sense of dread began to fill her, 'he was never able to get this far with me. He could never go through with it. Is it because she looks like...!?'

Though it was dangerous and though it would deplete a large portion of her remaining energy, Xianmei took over Nastasia's body. The struggles stopped in mid-swing as she assumed control. Leaning forward, as much as can be permitted by the sash binding her wrists, she used Nastasia's lips to murmur.

"Mikhail, remember Aoife."

Her words were laced with power as they forcefully pulled out a buried memory.

After hearing the name the man assaulting Nastasia's body stiffened. His dark eyes became unfocused as he gazed at her. Reaching out he grabbed a lock of red hair murmuring. "The hair is the same." His fingers traced down her jaw bone from one end to the other before sliding off the chin. "The jaw is the same, but the nose is a bit different and the eyes aren't green."

The strength fell from his arms as he sat there listlessly.

Seeing that the situation had turned around Xianmei released a breath. It still worked. That man, whose name she discovered was Mikhail through use of her ability, had a woman he loved with all his heart buried in his memories.

Human's weren't meant to live much longer than a hundred years. Their bodies, their organs especially the brain, would be unable to take the strain. There were some that reached an astounding point in their cultivation, allowing them to transcend that number by a hundred or two more years, but this man was not a subject of this phenomena.

His true age, Xianmei didn't know, but from what she managed to glean with her ability to probe the mind she knew that it was well over five hundred years. At the time she met him, his brain was already so fragmented it was a wonder he could still function.

The only thing that drove him forward, despite his delving deep into madness, was his desire to create a gate that would connect to a certain point. Through the years that she had been trapped by his side, she was unable to find the answer in his fragmented memories.

However, she could hazard a guess.

She felt it had to do with getting back to his world, back to the woman in his heart.

As she felt her control slip, Xianmei gave out a silent prayer. 'Let everything continue to go well, let someone save Nastasia soon.' Her consciousness fell back into a dark corner while her spent energy tried to replenish itself. For the time being, she wouldn't be aware of what was going on, she wouldn't be able to help again.

When Nastasia came back to herself she found the man staring blankly, his hands and mouth no longer roving her body. She was confused as to what happened but seeing as the man lost his fever, she released a relieved breath.

"Aoife, why are they blue..." he murmured, "did you change the color... no... not Aoife... not Aoife..." On and on, he was mumbling these things under his breath.

Swallowing hard, she felt her heart stop as her breath caught in her throat. It wasn't because of his insane mutterings... it was the name. That name... her fingers trembled. 'More than one person can share a name,' she told herself. Even her own name, countless people had it.

To distract from the terrifying thought that rose through her mind, she spoke to the man. Though it might have been better to allow him to remain with his crazy mutterings, her mind couldn't handle the direction her thoughts were going.

"Why do you want to make a gate... or rather, where is it you're wanting the gate to connect to?"

Though Xianmei fell into the background, the power she used to connect his memories to excavate Aoifee was still active. Nastasia wasn't aware, but as she asked this question it dug the memories out.

As they passed through his recollection it was as if he were in a theater, he sat alone in a front row seat, watching the strips as if they were removed from himself. The things that stood out to him at the time were shockingly clear while the things that didn't blurred into the background, difficult to distinguish.

The booms and cracking thunder shook his core and nearly made his ears bleed with their decibel.

He was running.

Why was he running?

That's right...

He needed to get to his next vantage point. Though sounds whistled and boomed, tearing up things around him, he didn't feel unsettled. There were people with him, his trusted companions. The blurred figure that was running beside him stopped with him as they rested a moment, hidden at the side of a wall.

The person's face cleared up like a 4K picture as he turned to him. The sweat and dirt on his tired face, the fear in his hazel eyes, and his messy brown hair were so clear that he felt he could reach out to touch them. His breathing was heavy, but he managed to say, "Mikhail, you nervous? This mission's a hefty one."

The youth in front of him was five years younger and participating in his first combat experience; it was natural that he was afraid. The 'him' on the screen laughed. "Not at all, once its over, we can all go home."

"Hmph," the youth scoffed, "so like a sniper! Always so cool-headed and unaffected."

He felt himself smile. "Alright, enough of this. Time to go, staying in one spot too long isn't good."

The brown-haired youth, as they prepared for another long sprint, seemed to glow with a more confident air. Right before they ran for it, he said. "I suppose it's better that you're like that. It's a relief you know, cause a guy like you has got my six, right?"

Mikhail slapped him on the shoulder. "Yeah, I've got your-" before he could finish the response, blood rushed up from the youth's throat and out his mouth, his face freezing in horror as he crumbled.

The memory froze and skipped as it turned dark. Across the screen of his recollections, something began to play.