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The child sat in the pitch-darkness of a small closet, amid sacks of vegetables and other supplies, his arms wrapped around his knees, his face buried in them, and his eyes squeezed shut. His mother had told him not to go out and to sit quietly, or the monsters would find him and drag him to hell. He couldn't see anything, but he listened to the noise, the wild roars of cruel monsters, the screams and wheezes of people, the clatter and clang of weapons. Frozen with fear, he could almost believe that none of this was happening to him, or that it was all a dream, or that he was just imagining it, and that when the door opened, he would see the light and his mother's kind face.
But when the noise died down, and the terrifying whispers of the monsters seemed to recede, no one opened the door.
Mom told him to sit quietly until she came back, and he would sit, even if deep down he already knew she wouldn't come back. Neither she nor his father.
When the door finally creaked open, he cringed even harder, thinking the abyss beasts had found him. But instead of the pain of sharp claws, a male voice rang out:
“Oh gods…”
Someone crouched down in front of him and placed a hand on his head. The boy looked up at the stranger, his eyes indifferent and weak.
“Poor thing... There are no more monsters, let's go.”
The man carefully picked up the unresisting child and carried him out of the closet.
Outside, everything was ablaze; in some places, the fires hadn't even been extinguished yet. And in that orange gloom, the last thing the child saw from behind his savior's strong shoulder were the pain-contorted, bloody faces of his dead parents.
Then he just became an empty shell.
He was doing what was expected of him, taking the role of a good, grateful kid. He lost everything and had nothing else to lose, so he carried on with his life like by a script, just doing the right things and saying the right words, although he spoke little, keeping it to himself.
For deep down he knew that children his age aren't supposed to think about violent revenge. And even that chance he lost, for the monsters who killed his family were already slain.
So what was the purpose of his shallow life now?
In the eyes of others, he was a diligent, polite, well-behaved boy, but only because that was expected of him. When in reality, he dreamed of that dreadful night, and in the dreams, he sensed the fire heat and breathed smoke, and saw his dead parents who looked nothing like he remembered them.
How strange. How come he even forgot their faces, their names?
Not even the names remained, only some vague memories of his mother's kind voice and his father's soft smile.
He didn't remember their faces, but in his dreams he knew that those people were not his parents.
Or were they?
He was spending so much time alone in the archives looking for who knows what. Yet he only found tales of brave warriors, dry reports and lists of deceased. He learned legends of the First Torchforger, the Cataclysm, the Abyss, the fae, the moons, the archons, still he couldn't find anything important to him. Nothing to fill his emptiness.
And then he met a mysterious Lightkeeper who came by name Flins.
Upon their first meeting he felt something familiar about him. Nikita was there and introduced them, and though Illuga was still a little child, he introduced himself politely and asked if mister Flins was faring well. In response, Flins called him "young master" for no apparent reason, and that was it, because then Nikita gave Illuga a stack of papers and told him to bring them to his office, thus sending him away.
Flins was weird, and upon that weirdness they bonded.
Flins never told anything truthful about himself. He was a master of avoidance, and Illuga took a lot of time to learn how to distinguish between his doublespeak and true stories. Only one thing was certain: Flins joined the LIghtkeepers shortly after the orphaned Illuga was taken in.
Flins inexorably addressed him as "young master" and no matter how often Illuga asked why, he did not answer directly, giving only some ridiculous excuses about ancient lords and upbringing.
Flins lived in a cemetery, which was abnormal in itself, but Illuga liked to come and visit him for so many reasons: most of the time they needed not to talk, and the silence of the cemetery was replenishing. Even when they talked, Flins never asked truly personal questions, as if he knew exactly what had happened to the young boy and how he felt about it. He never judged and never expected anything of him, just content and grateful for his company.
Illuga didn't understand it though. Flins was so mature and wise and knew so much, why would he be content to spend his free time with someone broken like him?
"Perphaps, am I reminding you of someone, mister Flins?" He asked without even thinking, after Flins once again called him "young master". The words just slipped on their own, and he thought nothing of it.
"While many people may share many personality traits, thus resembling each other, regardless, each of them is also unique. That also applies to you", answered Flins, once again avoiding the truth.
Illuga didn't push it. He was curious but not enough to push the boundaries. Flins respected him by not asking many questions, he must do the same for him.
He did notice however that in the cemetery there was one grave that stood apart. It was much older than the others, so much so that the name on the tombstone was unreadable, the carved letters flattened out by time, winds and rains. Except for that, this grave was much more well kept than all the fresher ones. Once, when Illuga came by earlier than expected, he looked around. The grave stood solemnly apart, alone and proud on a small hill, with someone's lost name on it. Illuga felt something, probably grief for the person buried there, or the grief that Flins was still feeling, if he looked after this particular grave with such care. He never mentioned it to Flins but he liked to think that he came to understand his melancholy a bit better.
Until another tragedy struck once more.
He woke up and couldn't tell if he was still dreaming or not. The darkness smelled of burning. Heat came from everywhere and began to soak into his body along with the smoke. It became difficult to breathe, which brought Illuga back to his senses, but all he saw around him was darkness and charred remains, and so at first he thought he was simply having another nightmare about his own childhood and the childhood of someone else. His body remained motionless, unsure of what to do in this situation. There was no one to fight and nowhere to flight, and Illuga already knew what would happen next: he would once again stumble upon the dead bodies of his parents, their faces stitched together with rough, unsightly scars, and then the fire would disappear, and absolute blackness would descend.
But suddenly, a lilac hue mixed with the orange conflagration, and his mind immediately reacted to it - the Wild Hunt. Amid the crackling and roaring of the fire, human screams and the wheezing of Abyssal monsters rang out. Something was wrong, Illuga knew, because everything seemed too real: the corpses of his parents, the ghost of a child running toward them, and the cries of people still alive.
Suddenly, someone poked him in the shoulder, and Illuga stumbled back, blinking. The squad captain shouted to them, the living: "Retreat! Retreat! Illuga, run!" And then the captain was stabbed from behind by a lightkeeper whose soul had already been consumed by the Wild Hunt, and this vision overlapped with another one, ancient - an elderly gentleman with frightened eyes, from whose stomach a bloody blade is also sticking out, and who cries to him, “Master, it’s dangerous here, run!”
His trained body responded to the command, and Illuga ran, picking up a wounded comrade along the way. But everything was a jumble in his head: past, present, dream, and reality. "Later," Illuga told himself, "but now I have to run. Run..."
And he ran, as he had run in his dreams and in the past, he ran from the past that had suddenly overtaken him - the boy from his dreams, the one who, like himself, had lost his parents on his tenth birthday, and the one who had made a deal with - oh Gods!.. It was himself, now he understood it, remembered. He remembered his name, and he remembered the one with whom he had made a pact.
The empty vessel was suddenly filled again with memory, bitterness and a burning desire to survive and save at least someone else, at least this time.
“Leave me,” groaned the comrade. “Leave me, save yourself.”
“No!” Illuga barked. “I can’t leave you! Not again!”
He has already lost too much in his two lives.
The body moved on adrenaline and reflexes. They managed to break away from the Wild Hunt, the eerie screams died down, leaving only an ominous silence. Illuga bandaged the rescued warrior’s wounds as best he could, and only then noticed that he too had been wounded in the shoulder, and his entire left arm was covered in blood. His head ached unbearably, tears of anger, pain, resentment, and helplessness streamed down his cheeks, but they couldn't stop there. They had to reach the nearest outpost...
He woke in the dead of night. Outside, it was dark and quiet. Inside, it was empty, and a soft bluish light illuminated only a small corner of the room. Illuga sleepily opened his eyes, this time knowing for sure that he was not dreaming.
He felt dull pain in his left shoulder and the tight bandages. He felt tired and wanted to go back to sleep, but at the same time, the fear of reliving the nightmare from the past kept him awake. He glanced around the room and, for some reason, first noticed the empty bunk next to him — his neighbor had died in that terrible skirmish with the Wild Hunt — and only then did he see Flins sitting next to his own bed. It was his lantern, standing on the nightstand, casting a bluish glow, and Illuga sighed with relief. His fears and tension dissolved, for now he knew for sure that he was safe and that neither monsters, nor people, nor nightmares would disturb his sleep.
He looked at Flins with the weariness of a person who had died and been reborn against his will, whose life had been nothing but pain and unbearable suffering. Now he knew why Flins called him "young master," and whose grave he tended so meticulously.
This was the grave of a young man who made a deal with the devil and gave his life for revenge. It was his own grave.
The thought of his former body being nothing but bones sent a chill through Illuga, and he wrapped himself more tightly in the warm blanket.
“Stay with me,” he said quietly, looking into Flins’s eyes. “Until I fall asleep.”
Flins looked at him long and hard, thoughtfully, and Illuga didn't look away either. The words escaped him by old memory, and he couldn't tell if Flins realized that he'd remembered everything.
But he was too sleepy to think about it seriously.
“Of course, my young master,” Flins replies with a smile that is both gentle and patronizing, placing his hand on his chest in a familiar gesture. “Untill the very end.”
For the first time in many nights, Illuga slept completely peacefully.