Last time: Carefully he slid his arms beneath Oliver's back and knees, lifting him into his arms and carrying him from the mountain-side. "I… - I'm sorry. But I'm not the Maseo you once knew. I'm no longer your friend. I can't defy the Demon."

xoxoxo

Cold. So cold. That was Oliver's first conscious thought, as his senses returned to awareness. The blood in his veins felt like ice, like slow crawling particles that sliced him open from within. And his skin was frozen, he felt like it would just take one touch to make him splinter into thousand pieces. It hurt, he hurt! Everywhere! He had never known such pain; it made him numb to all other sensation. He couldn't feel. Couldn't think, because his senses had dulled to everything else. Couldn't remember. 'What happened? Where am I? Why am I so cold? So cold… so dark. Maybe I should sleep. Not think. Not feel.', he thought. It would make the pain go away. And so he did, welcoming the darkness' return …

The next time Oliver rose to awareness, it was to the feeling of warmth on his cheek. A touch? It felt like a touch, he thought. 'Who's touching me?' He wanted to ask, wanted to see, wanted to beg the person to make the cold and the numbness go away. 'Please help me!' he screamed in his head, but his eyes refused to open and his lips refused to move. The numbness that had taken hold of his body, had put him into a frozen prison he couldn't escape from.

Oliver thought he heard a voice. But he couldn't understand what it was saying, his brain to sluggish to make sense of the words. He would've liked to know what the voice said, but instead he let it lull him back to the darkness, as he felt himself being lifted. He let himself be carried away from the cold and the darkness on the wings of whispered words.

xoxoxo

Oliver didn't know how much time had passed, when he returned to semi-consciousness again. The concept of time was beyond his grasp at the moment. It was leaping, stretching and retracting like a rubberband. And he still couldn't remember…

With awareness also came another sensation. The cold was gone. But it had been replaced with a burning fire, no less intense. It made every cell and pore in his body scream. The slow crawling ice particles in his veins had turned into molten lava streams scorching their way through his body.

And his chest hurt, it hurt to breath, 'Why can't breath?' Every time he tried, a scorching pain stabbed through his chest like a sword made from glowing steel. He coughed and felt the bitter tang of blood in his mouth and on his lips. 'Maybe I'm dying'

With his last remaining strength, Oliver struggled to open his eyes. Managing barely more than a slid, he gazed upon the blurry, distorted world around him and thought he saw stone walls, bathed in the yellow glow of fire. Maybe that's the reason why he felt so hot? I died, and now I am in the pits of hell.

He blinked, as a dark form appeared in his line of vision. The person, a man, Oliver thought, towered above him and his eyes lingered for a while on his prone body, seemingly studying him. The man's gaze penetrated through skin and bone, reaching into his very soul. Despite feeling hot, Oliver shivered.

Then the man turned away, speaking to somebody else, before returning his focus on Oliver and kneeling down next to him. A cool hand touched his brow, softly, almost caressing, making the flames that licked at his skin disappear for a moment. Oliver closed his eyes in relief.

"Sleep, son. For when you awake next, the world will have changed." The man had bent down to whisper those words into Oliver's ears. Oliver summoned all strength he had left to open his eyes one last time. And when he did, he looked into the eyes of The Demon.