With the horrors that came from this world gone mad, I never expected to return to a place I had sworn off a year ago: my very own home. I didn't know whether it was the past or present; all I did know was that things were back to the way things were. Gracie was passing out her infamous dinner rolls, speaking sweet little nothings the entire time to a cynical Nate. Yet it didn't matter, because at the very least things were finally back to normal. And with that realization, I reached out my hand to take one of those rolls.

But at that moment, reality hit me like a cold splash of water. Because that outstretched hand proved to be the armored one of Tactic, in that instant, my mind refocused, replacing this white filled void with cold black reality! Yet this white light persisted and focused, swirling around until it made a familiar sight: Thomas Davidson.

"Give it up, Tactic; it's time to face the facts; it's time to give up."

"Give up? Why would I ever do that knowing what they did to us?! They killed Gracie and Nate, and you want me to forget that!" I say in blood boiling spite.

"And how can you forget who caused it," Thomas said as the white and black lights mixed into a black and white scene.

Once again, I flashed back to a year ago, gun in my hand more afraid than I've ever been. Through the trail of ripped clothes and cracking bones, I found the noise had entered Nate's room. For a tense few minutes, I heard a pandemonium of thrashing and ripping; I tried peeking through the slightly opened door, hoping I could get a slight advantage. But that small creek gained the attention of the beast as I heard a word that put me over the edge.

"Daad?" Nate said in a pleading tone.

In that instant, my body reacted on its own, emptying the entire clip into the black mass! An ear-splitting screech then cut through the night, as it finally crumpled on the floor dead. When my adrenaline finally stopped pulsing, revealing that the black mass was nothing more than a rat-like creature, with Nate nowhere to be found. In that instant, the dream faded back into the mass with Thomas in sorrowful, broken wrath stating.

"You killed him. You killed our son in cold blood and walked away," he said in cutting bitterness.

"That demon wasn't our son! He died with Gracia during Genesis," I say in bitter shakiness.

"Do you believe that lie? Do you repeat it in your head over and over just to make that truth less real? Do you think that if they were still alive, they would come running back after all they did?"

"You couldn't protect them! The world was crumbling apart, and you couldn't protect them! You were weak, too soft, to protect them!" I said in desperation.

"I may be weak, but at least I can look in the mirror and say that I'm not a monster. That I was a human."

"That humanity made you weak. Humanity was hopeless far before Genesis ever started. I'm the hero that they need to stop the world from crumbling. If I have to do what needs to be done, then so be it. At least I'm saving lives. I will not stop until every one of those abominations is underneath our boot. When history looks upon me, I'll be their savior, not a relic like you. Because Genesis killed you too, all this time, you were nothing more than a dead man walking!" I said as the white light finally vanished into the ether.

Like a bolt of lighting, my body returned to its senses, more energized than I've ever been. The entire world seemed to fade away in my one-way blitzkrieg straight to Prophet. With the Agonizer blazing bright, I unleashed a barrage of senses unlike any the world has ever seen. And as Prophet in disbelief kept screaming, pleading for his worthless life, I kept hammering him over and over again in crimson thunder. I didn't know when I stopped, but once I did, Prophet was left a bloody, catatonic mess, with all of his followers knocked unconscious.

Hours later, I collected the rest of my forces, a fourth of them had died, but Ellen already had those deaths under wraps. Either way, I considered it a victory, because one more monster was about to be caged and studied in honor of our research, a mind controller could be more useful in our fight. However, before I sought any form of medical treatment, I decided to pay a visit to an old stomping ground. Despite my aching head and bruised body, I was still brimming within untapped power, because it seemed I had finally found my path, and I finally realized there was no going back. So in one last requiem to the late Thomas Davidson, I looked through the window, remembering all he couldn't protect and the people that I could think of my cracked and bloodied mask. And once I had finally made the proper funeral, I burned down the decrepit house as I walked towards the domain I am destined to claim.