"Through fire we are reborn."
Ash and smoke fill the air as the fiery blast dies down. Kem's mouth hangs open in speechless horror as he takes in the scene in front of him. Seg has been shielding him from the explosion, but he frees himself from the other man now, knowing that the threat is gone.
She is gone...
Just a few moments ago, Jayna-Zod was warning them about what she thought might be her grand-son's true intentions for coming back to this time, when Kem's attention was caught by the tiny figure that appeared in the doorway to his bar.
Ona! He had been worried sick about her, Adam's assurance that at least he had tried to help her not having done anything to appease his concerns. The little girl had always been like family to him, after all. He had known her since she had been a baby and had more than once offered shelter to her mother and her. He hadn't been able to save Rhom, but he had sworn to himself that he would be damned if he let anything happen to Ona.
"Thank you, Uncle Kem. Taking me to him was the greatest thing you could have done."
Ona's words from earlier that day cut through his mind now as he looks around, searching for a sign of life that he knows he's not going to find. His mind is still reeling to catch up with what just happened, but he has no doubt that Ona was in the centre of all of it. That she is... gone. Forever.
"Through fire we are reborn."
He was so happy just seconds ago, to see that Ona had come back to him. That she had sought him out on her own. Of course her strange demeanour confused him a bit, but it was only when the writing on her skin began to glow, accompanied by that ticking sound, that a part of him started to realise that something was wrong. But after that everything happened too quickly for him to make any sense of it whatsoever. The glowing becoming more intense by the second, the scream in the distance, Adam suddenly appearing in the middle of this entire mess - he was there, right? Kem suddenly isn't so sure of that anymore - and then Seg pushing him against the wall right as a huge explosion tore through his bar, ripping a gaping hole in his heart in the process.
"Through fire we are reborn."
With trembling lips and wide eyes Kem now looks down at the small flames still smouldering on the floor of his bar, and he feels as if the world around him has suddenly gone mad. Or maybe it's just him who's gone mad...
He pushes the heels of his hands against his forehead. For a moment it's as if he can't breathe, there's still so much ash in the air. But then, in a slit second of horrified realisation, he remembers what the source of that ash is. Kem clasps his hands over his mouth as the answer to his previous question becomes appallingly obvious. It is the world that has gone mad. And he is perfectly willing to follow it.
Ona is gone and his sanity with her. The fire is all that remains.
Through fire we are reborn.