The sight lasted only for a moment before the present came rushing back, and he spun around searching for the source as the screams still echoed in his ears.

Another vision came, this one longer. There were children running, sliding in the wet mud, desperately trying to escape something. The vision panned backward, as if he looked over his shoulder, and he saw the trees, alight with fire that flew like a flock of birds from branch to branch, chasing him, crackling an awful warning the closer it got. He ran and he ran, but the fire was faster. Then trees started dropping; great towering beasts older than he could imagine slammed to the ground, rattling the very earth. The fire spread like a monster’s breath, lighting up the undergrowth and decay that sat beneath the canopy like it was nothing more than kindling. Before he knew it, the flames were in front of him and beside him, as well as behind him. He turned and turned and turned, certain that somewhere there was a gap, if he could only find it. But the smoke was getting thicker, and his head ached and his lungs burned with every breath. He huddled in the middle of the small clearing with a few other children, back to back, as the fire encroached ever closer, waiting.

Waiting to die.

Cruze pulled himself from the vision with a start, pressing his hand to the nearest tree to be sure it was standing. He felt the wet bark against his palm as he struggled to regain his breath, and was embarrassed to note tears tracked down his cheeks. He shoved his knuckles roughly over his skin, wiping away the weakness, and surveyed the area around him more carefully, noting downed trees over which shrubs and moss had grown so completely that Cruze could only guess that lifetimes had passed since their falling.

“Did you die here?” he murmured, knowing volume did not matter, not in this strange, haunted place he found himself in.

A rush of emotion poured over him, stronger than the torrent of rain they had endured in the days since they had been stranded here—grief, regret, fear, but most of all—fury.

“Were you left here like me?” he asked. “Left to die?”

He received another flash of images, this time of a carriage like the one that had transported him and the others to this place—something more suited to moving livestock than children—followed by a flash of the city by the sea he used to call home.

Locke.

Cruze made a promise to himself then. He would do whatever it took to survive this savage place. And someday, no matter how many days it took, he would have his revenge on the people who did this. Not just to him, but to all those who had died in this place before him.