There was no sound of joyous screams of children playing, but rather the distant wails of old women, kneeling on the ground before mounds of dirt. Alec followed their glances and saw, with a jolt to his heart, that the mounds were all fresh graves, rows and rows of them, all marked with crooked crosses—and he felt himself sinking. He suddenly knew, with an awful premonition that swept over him, that everyone and everything he ever knew and loved was dead.

“NO!” Alec shrieked.

Without thinking, without even being aware of what he was doing, Alec stumbled down the hill at a sprint, nearly tripping over himself as he gained speed. It was as if he were stumbling toward a nightmare.

“Alec!” Marco called out behind him.

Alec tripped and fell in the grass, rolling, covered in mud but not caring as he got to his feet again and continued to run. He could barely feel the world around him, could hear only his own heart pounding madly as he ran.

“Ashton!” he cried out as he ran into what was once his village.

Alec ran past house after house, everything burnt to a crisp, nothing but smoldering fires. Nothing was recognizable. He could not fathom what on earth had happened here. Who could have done this? And why?

Alec could not find anything left of his own house as he sprinted by it with dread, now just a pile of embers. All that remained was one stone wall of what used to be his father’s forge.

Alec followed the wailing and ran to the end of town. Finally, he reached the rows of freshly dug graves, the air thick with the smell of soil, smoke, and death.

He reached the rows of old women, kneeling, weeping, dirt on their hands, in their hair, wailing their mournful prayers. Alec stumbled forward and scanned all the bodies, his heart pounding inside, praying it couldn’t be.

Please, he prayed. Don’t let my family be there. Please. I’ll give anything.

Alec suddenly stopped cold and felt his knees go weak as he saw a sight he wished he had never seen: there, laid out before him, untended, were the corpses of his father and mother, too pale, frozen in a look of agony. He felt everything inside him die at that moment.

“MOTHER! FATHER!”

He collapsed by their side in the dirt, embracing them, and his knees sank into the fresh earth as he wept, unable to understand what was happening.

Alec suddenly remembered his brother. He sat bolt upright and searched everywhere, and he could not see him. He had a glimmer of hope: had he survived?

Desperate, he ran over to a kneeling woman and grabbed her arm.

“Where is he!?” he asked. “Where is my brother!?”

The woman looked back at him and shook her head wordlessly, too overcome with grief to respond.

Alec jumped up and ran, searching.

“ASHTON!” he cried out.