“What are you afraid of?!” ‘Dried Cedar’ screamed back some sense into the adults that were present. “This woman is trapped behind the barrier! Continue with the ceremony!”

Upon hearing this, the guard that had killed Valerian and Reed, continued. Goodbye Elm, I never really knew you. I watched in terror, as the lifeless little body dropped with a loud ‘thud’ on the ground, his blood merging with the bloody stream. At the same time, I kept on struggling, when I noticed the belt of my tunic had loosened. With one bold move, I slipped out of my top and safely landed on the ground, half-naked.

“Hey!” The guard was so surprised, he hesitated for a moment. I used this opportunity to dash towards the stranger. No, she was not a stranger to me anymore. She was Violet. And she was my savior.

Violet switched her gaze from the panicked adults to me. She had a smirk on her face, heavily implying, I told you so. I smirked back, feeling very confident.

“Don’t you dare!” ‘Dried Cedar’ seemed to have a hunch who Violet really was. But the entire situation overwhelmed her. Not only had I successfully escaped their ‘special treatment’, but there was also now this dark-skinned woman with crimson eyes who was standing behind the barrier.

While she and her seemingly intoxicated practitioner friends still seemed stunned, the black guards finally regained their composure. “Prevent him from touching the barrier!” The oldest one of the group exclaimed. All of them drew their blades and charged at me. Like a pack of rabid wolves with piercing blue eyes, they jumped, each one ready to pierce right through my small body.

Suddenly, everything seemed to progress in slow motion. Any fear that I had felt earlier had suddenly evaporated into thin air. Violet’s sheer presence, even beyond the barrier, had not only calmed me down, I felt I was much faster than before. I easily reached her spot across the stream before the blades plunged into me.

Continuing in slow motion, Violet stretched out her right hand, stopping right in front of the barrier. It sensed her presence. Tiny sparks flew from the area right before her hand, preventing passage. Will you submit to me? This was the second time I could hear her voice speak clearly to me.

Deep in my heart, I had always known who she was. Yet I had never considered her a threat or danger. To me, the world here, with the practitioners and the black guards, was the threat, the true danger. Violet had become the oxygen I breathed whenever I felt like suffocating. And so I gladly reached out to her, from across the barrier.

“Sekhmet.”

I finally whispered her name, acknowledging that she indeed was the famed goddess of war. The one who nearly destroyed our world in fury.

There was a high-pitched shattering noise. When I looked closely, the chains around her ankles and wrists burst into millions of tiny black crystal shards and dispersed into thin air. At the same time, the invisible barrier created by the stream cracked as if it was made of glass. When it burst into pieces, they turned into dust as well. With no wall preventing her anymore, she hopped over to my side, holding my hand. With her other hand, she gently brushed my hair, like an affectionate mother who was proud of her own son. She bowed down to me and kissed me on the forehead. I felt something tingling there as if a sharp needle found its way through my skull and into my body. What I didn’t realize at the moment was that she had made me her disciple. My once blue eyes faded into bright gold. Black veins ran across the outer edge of my eyes.

Then, she raised the hand that brushed my hair, without averting her gaze. Time seemed to move forward at a normal pace again, but the blades of the black guards never reached me.

Instead, they seemed to stab into an invisible shield around both of us. Since the impact was so strong, their blades shattered and they all were pushed away, with some flying all the way to the wall.

“Im-impossible!” ‘Dried Cedar’ screeched. “We must prevent her from leaving this place!” Since the guards were temporarily unavailable, she drew her own blade, urging her fellows to do the same. At this moment I saw Lilly blink. She gave me a puzzled look. Had I stalled the ceremony for so long that the effects of the drug were slowly receding? I noticed the other children blink as well, with confused looks on their faces.

“Lilly!” I happily exclaimed. Praise the gods, she was alright! But my relief did not last very long. In the next moment, Lilly had snatched one of the broken blades that were lying around and held it on to her own throat. I gasped. "What are you doing?!" But the only response I received was her shaking her head in disappointment.

“Begone, demon of the past,” she whispered one last time. And with that, she slit herself, her face displaying a strong sense of righteousness. The blade fell out of her tiny hands with a soft clang. Gently, she fell over, planting her red hair into the bloody stream. However, even with her sacrifice, the barrier remained broken. It was beyond repair. But she didn’t know it.

All this time, she had willingly accepted her fate. Unlike the others, she had understood that death awaited her. And she gladly embraced it. What greater contribution to the gods could there be than offering their own life? For the ever-pious little girl, this was but a step to heaven.

But it stirred something in me. I felt hatred boiling within my tiny body. My friends were gone, Lilly had willingly killed herself in an attempt to stop Sekhmet. And all in the name of the gods? What nonsense! And these guards! I watched as they all had managed to get up again. Even without their weapons, they were incredible foes, as my travel experience to this place had shown me. Were they going to kill me as well? Or even kill Violet?

In my mind, the thought of them laying there in their own puddle of blood suddenly seemed alluring. The longer I thought about it, the more enticing it seemed. Violet sensed this change in me. But instead of stopping me, she grinned and reached out to me. Boy. This was the last time I heard her voice so clearly. When I turned around, I saw her fingers flick my forehead, and my eyes turned into the same crimson color she had.