The village was burning, quicker than anyone could have ever hoped to have been able to save it properly. There was the shouting of villagers that were doing their best to escape the carnage, only to be met with the sounds and jeers of the bandits that had come to raid in the first place. The fire had turned the entire landscape into a bright orange glow.
The market where Hazel and Gretchen had gone to with their father so many times had been destroyed, one of the first places to be looted.
There were homes aflame, buildings with their windows knocked out and shattered glass left to scatter over the ground.
And there in the middle of it was Gretchen.
What had formed around her could only be described as a vortex, one that threatened to swallow up everything to go with it.
Hazel saw his sister, surrounded by flames, fighting the men that had come to the village.
He saw his father, charging ahead and shouting something that he couldn't quite make out.
He saw his father, nocking an arrow.
He saw his father taking aim at a bandit that was aiming at Gretchen with a rifle.
He saw—
The bandit fell, a gunshot ringing out so loud that it rang through the whole burning town.
Hazel whipped his head to be sure that he'd heard it from the right place, but he hadn't.
When he looked back, his father was on the ground, dark red leaking out of him and staining the ground around him. Hazel looked between his sister and his father, his father that was dying, his father that was bleeding out, and he broke into a sprint towards where his father had fallen.
He couldn't just stand there and do nothing.
The entire scene was somehow managing to fade into static in the back of Hazel's mind, to the point where he was only aware of his father, the wind, and his sister. The bandits didn't matter.
Nothing mattered.
As far as he was concerned, the world was ending.
He skidded to a stop beside his father, all too aware of how vulnerable he was by just being there, but he dropped down to the the body all the same.
Red wept from the center of his chest. Hazel reached out and carefully peeled his father's shirt to the side to see that it was just as he feared. He swallowed hard, the worst possibilities beginning to dawn on him and then pressed his finger's to his father's neck.
No pulse.
Dead.
Hazel sucked in a breath that was too difficult to get down. He forced himself up to his feet and looked up at his sister.
When she looked back at him, Hazel saw the horror that dawned on her expression.
Hazel looked away from his sister, and walked away from the village.
The wind began to slow, and soon she was there behind him.
Hazel didn't want to talk.
There was nothing to talk about.
When they reached the cabin again, the villagers had gone off ahead in search of help.
It took Hazel too long to realize that his clothes were covered in his father's blood.
When the realization set in, he didn't know what to do with himself.
Everything had been fine.
And then it hadn't.
And he was suppose to figure out where to pick up the pieces, if that was even possible.
Hazel had never felt more alone, more lost, more hopeless.
He sat in those clothes for longer than he should have.
It was a miracle the grimm didn't come.