That morning, Soul woke us all up with the sound of a foghorn. Nobody really knew how he managed to produce such a loud noise, and when we asked him about it, he simply replied that "there is no time for nonsense right now." To this day, that question remains unanswered. It all felt much different than I expected. My departure to Sunwalley was at least a bit more peaceful. This felt like I was in the army.

Walking through the portal was yet again a painful experience. For convenience, White and Soul carried me and Chester on their backs. They already knew the screeching noises of the portal would make any mortal pass out, so they didn't want to pick us off the ground after we would arrive.

They waited for both of us to wake up right in front of the shield surrounding Everstar. It was orange and semi-transparent, so I could still see the city behind it. The sight was terrifying. The glorious metropolis I remembered from Jack's memories was all gone. Now it was just a bunch of ruins. Those few buildings that were still standing were mere husks of what they used to be. Smoking towers of concrete, nothing more. And the heat felt as if I entered an oven. The air was so hot it was hard to breathe until we somehow managed to get used to it.

"Alright, they are both awake. Anci, break the barrier!" Soul ordered, as Chester and I slowly got back on our feet. The moment the ice gem touched the burning shield, it all crumbled down. Due to the shell's overwhelming size, it almost felt like the entire sky was falling. And the moment this happened, the first problems appeared, the Burned crawled out of their hiding, hissing and growling at us, seemingly woken up by the ruckus we were causing. They looked like tall and slender humanoids, with their limbs and body all extremely thin. Their heads were long, going further to the back as if someone had stretched a human's skull. Their mouths and eyes were emitting a slight orange glow.

"These regenerate! Strike the centre of their body! Their hearts!" Foof shouted immediately to warn us about them. None of the Deaths waited too long to test it out.

Beast was the first one to strike. He knew that those creatures will most likely be highly resistant to his fire magic, so for this mission, he developed a special ability. He took a stance and after a moment of targeting, he threw a punch towards the nearest Burned. A laser-like projectile of burning plasma flew out of his fist and right through the first monster. Their corpse fell to the ground, emitting smoke as it began to vanish. When the other creatures saw it, they started running towards us at full speed. Some of them broke their slim legs, only for them to snap back in place seconds later as if nothing had happened to them in the first place.

"Don't let them touch you! They burn!" Foof shouted yet another piece of advice. Anci didn't wait long to react, with a snap of his fingers, a massive wave of swords rained down from the sky, pinning down as many Burned as he could. Then, once they were incapacitated, hammers followed, falling right towards the centres of their bodies, crashing through their hearts. Soul and Chester then took care of any of those creatures that would manage to slip through. In the meantime, White held Foof in her arms, looking after both him and me.

"Well, this was... oddly easy," Chester said right after the last corpse dissipated into thin air. But almost as if he jinxed it, suddenly, an amulet around what seemed to be Soul's wrist started beeping.

"What is that?" Beast asked and inspected the jewellery closer.

"Alarm. Fire wave incoming! We need to hide!" Soul commanded and immediately started looking for a hiding spot.

"There! In that building!" I threw in a helpful tip and pointed to the closest standing skyscraper. Most of its top part was already missing, but it still had at least eight floors still mostly in one piece.

When Soul started running the way I showed him, we all instinctively followed him. It wasn't that far away, but we still barely made it. As instructed, we kept our heads down and stayed in the shadows. Then came the wave. It was quite literally as if somebody threw a massive amount of fire our way. The heat felt almost unbearable. This all lasted only about ten seconds before it finally stopped, but we all felt frightened by this experience. One second too late and we would be burned to crisps. My skin was already covered in a thin layer of sweat, and I had only been in the city for a couple of minutes.

"Alright. Where now?" Chester asked and sighed in relief. If this was something we had to endure for a longer period of time, it would truly be a hellish experience.

"We should move from rooftop to rooftop. It would be very unwise to stay on the ground with all those Burned running around," Soul suggested.

"And how exactly do you plan on getting on the roof? Stairs are in such bad shape they would crumble under our feet in no time!" Anci pointed to the staircase leading further up. It truly seemed like it has already been through its best days.

"What about the elevator?" Chester suggested and nodded towards the sliding doors with the label "ground floor". Everyone's eyes then turned to him, staring him down, as if they were asking if he really means it.

"An elevator? Are you dumb? Half of this place is already missing! I bet you that the elevator isn't working anymore!" Soul scolded him.

"I know that, you idiot! But perhaps I could use my vines to carry us up through the empty elevator shaft," when Chester explained it, it really didn't seem like such a bad idea. Everyone looked at each other as if they waited for a better plan to emerge, but when nobody said anything, we agreed to do it as Chester suggested.

The way up was terrifying. When he said that his vines would "carry" us, I expected him to somehow make a new elevator out of them. In reality, however, he simply conjured up a bunch of them all the way up to the top and then proceeded to make them throw us from one to the other. I have to say, flying through the air, waiting for a plant-like tendril to grab you, isn't exactly the most comfortable feeling. But despite that, we all made it up to the last floor alive.

"Fuck! Okay, we're never letting him do that again!" Soul expressed his discomfort and leaned out of a window as if he was about to throw up. I assumed that the bumpy ride didn't sit well with him.

"Yay! That was fun! Can we do that more often?" Foof, on the other hand, seemed to enjoy it perhaps a bit too much.

"Maybe... some other time," White promised him, but judging by her nervous smile, I'd say she didn't exactly fancy the ride here either.

"Whoa... guys, check it out!" Chester called out to us from a different room. It seemed that our complaints about his method of climbing flew directly over his head.

We all slowly stood up, collected our thoughts, and headed over to him, eager to see what he wanted to show us. It all became clear very soon. From that room, you had an amazing view over Everstar, thanks to a missing wall. It was so different from what I saw back in Jack's vision. It didn't resemble the city at all anymore. Just a bunch of scorched buildings, barely standing, with parts of them eroded away by the fire waves. It was a fascinating sight, but not a pretty one.

"Okay, what now?" I asked to break through the moment of silence.

"Now, we'll jump over to that place," Soul pointed to a building west of us.

"Are you crazy?! We can't just cross a gap like that!" I was immediately against such an idea. Not really because it would be that far away, but because of the horrifying idea of falling down at least eight floors.

"Come on! It's just an alley across. You'll make that jump without problems!" he patted me on the back and along with the other deaths, headed off towards the other building.

The place we were supposed to jump from was pretty much just a pile of rubble, left here after the ceiling came crashing down. The plan was relatively simple, but as soon as I looked down at the alley below me, my stomach turned upside down.

"I can't jump this! There's no way!" I argued against this horrible idea.

"Oh my god, get your ass over there already!" Chester mumbled, seemingly annoyed that I'm taking my time. Before I could say anything else, a black stalk wrapped around my waist and tossed me across the gap, right into the window of the other building. When I felt the solid ground suddenly disappear from under my feet, I started screaming. My instincts were telling me that I was soon about to die. Fortunately, I very quickly landed on another hard floor, without suffering any injuries, except for perhaps a few small bruises. The moment my body rolled onto the heated concrete, I let out a sigh of relief. Unfortunately, it was far too soon for that. The moment I tried to stand up, the ground beneath me gave up, and I found myself falling and screaming yet again.

I landed in a big dark room. The only light reaching the place was through the hole in the ceiling, which I fell through. And although I couldn't see much, I could definitely tell that this place was more than strange. Small portable generators lined the walls, with cables connected to industrial lights. I tried turning them on, but it seemed that all the gas in them was already used up. Skeletons were lying around the place, still wearing torn-up clothes from the moment they died. It seemed as if these people were attacked. On a nearby table, there was a map of Everstar with several strategical locations marked. Some of them were even labelled, such as "Station A", "Station B", "Bunker", or "IFRIT???". It didn't take long for me to realize what was going on. Those who lived here were probably survivors of the massive heatwave that washed over the city. The boxes with rations and barrels with long-evaporated water were further proof. And judging by broken weapons, scattered all over the place, these people were used to fighting. It was a resistance of sorts. Remnants of the few survivors. I felt sad for them. Clearly, they were eventually found and killed by the Burned, or in the worse case, by Ifrit himself.

"Eddie! Are you okay?!" my friends started shouting from the hole in the ceiling.

"Yeah! Come down here! I found something interesting!"

Needless to say that all of us were very surprised. Since the place seemed to be so well barricaded, we decided to stay here until the next fire wave would wash over the city. And although the time here was peaceful, it was also incredibly boring.

"Hey, check this out!" Anci broke the silence after a few minutes of waiting. "This one is still in perfect shape!" We all looked at what he was carrying in his arms. It was a shortsword. The only one that managed to survive in one piece, as it seemed. The only thing it was missing was its pommel.

"The firearms are all bust. The heat probably doesn't sit well with them. But some more simple weapons survived. I thought you might want to take this one, Eddie. After all, you are the only one of us who doesn't have any sort of weapon. And perhaps it would have some... sentimental value to you?" Anci was right. I knew that if I took the sword, it would always remind me of all the people I was going to avenge.

"Sure, I'll take it." I grabbed the blade from him. It was relatively light but completely average in any other way.

"It's a shame the pommel is missing. Maybe if we look around, we can find a replacement?" The moment Anci said it, I got a very stupid idea. To this day, I still don't know how I came up with it. Perhaps it was due to my creative nature, or the incredible heat slowly cooking my brain.

I walked over to White and asked her if she could lend me the ice gem for a while. She did so without any questions. After all, we wouldn't need it anymore. I took it out of the box and carefully put it on a nearby table, being very careful not to touch it directly. Then finally, after some adjustments, its sharp point was facing upwards.

"What are you..." Anci started talking. Before he could finish his sentence, I smashed the hilt of the sword against the gem. "HAVE YOU LOST YOUR MIND?!?!" Anci shouted at me when he saw it. He most likely thought that I'd break the gem or the sword, both of which he didn't want to see, as our blacksmith. He tried rushing over to stop me, but Soul managed to hold him back.

"Wait!! He might be onto something!" he tried calming him down, with seemingly no effect.

"If he breaks the gem, then the explosion of the magic..."

"Shut up, Anci! Have some faith in our god, eh?"

I kept on hitting the stone, over and over again, hoping that my plan would work out. Eventually, a loud crack finally silenced the bickering deaths behind me. Small shards of the gem flew across the room and a comfortable chill slowly replaced the unbearable heat. I turned around, holding my new weapon. The gem very nicely fitted as the pommel of the sword. It didn't only cool the blade down but also created a faintly glowing aura around it.

"That's... not physically possible!" Anci argued, completely dumbstruck by what had happened.

"Not possible? What are you talking about? He's a God. For him, nothing is impossible. If he says the gem will fit as a pommel, then it will obey," White said, looking at me with eyes glowing full of pride. My powers were once again listening to me.