Words try to get out from the suffocating confinement of his throat, but they can't.
"Das?" Drachen turns to see the young archmage staring blankly ahead, his eyes glow gently with purple energy, just like the large ghost woman from afar.
She knows something is up, so she shoots a beam of light at her but it goes through harmlessly. Her surprise is quickly interrupted by more ghosts approaching from all over town.
They fly down at Das who seems lost in his mind, so she takes it upon herself to protect him from harm, shooting light and fire at the ghosts, keeping them in line even as their numbers only grow, like a flock of vultures waiting for a wounded animal to die.
"Das! Wake up!"
Drachen's voice doesn't get to him, for him, the world is not the same as it was only a few seconds ago. He looks around frantically as the buildings are replaced by the stone pillars and decorated walls of the throne room.
The guards all around him begin to shake, like glass they break down revealing common men, women, and children of all ages, some close to each other, looking as scared as he is.
He knows these are not common people. Everyone has black hair as he does. They are mages.
"I'm not supposed to be here" he whispers, looking at the trembling, scared people around him "I have to be...I should be"
"This is exactly where you belong"
Bright, burning light almost blinds him, forcing him and everyone else to cover their eyes with their arms, shielding them from the King. Sitting on the throne, it's like if the sun itself had come down, impossible to look at it, only seeing the outlines of his armor.
"Every day since the beginning of your existence, destiny has led you here" the King continues, his voice thundering across the large throne room with ease "You've had a long history mages, but today, it ends"
Suddenly, Das feels how his body is invaded by a foreign entity, forcing his body to remain still while everyone else whines in pain, moving forward and in front of him forming a line.
Then, a figure slowly descends from above, standing in front of the line, his eyes burning with purple fire.
"Father" Das whispers, recognizing the bandaged man.
Vater raises his hands and summons a torrent of flames that swallow everyone but Das, he watches them helplessly burn, they scream and plead in vain.
The stone floor breaks apart and countless scorched arms try to reach out to him, from the pillars and walls more of them appear, all while the screams of the dead get louder and louder.
It all becomes almost unbearable to endure, he shuts his eyes close and it all goes quiet. Then, an unhinged and loud laughter.
Once he opens his eyes again he is no longer in the palace, but inside his room on the tower, many times larger, but it is his room. In front of him, there is a cloaked figure, the source of the laughter.
Step by step, he gets closer to him, and whispers in the dark join the cackling of the man, they come from all around the room but have no bodies, they speak words that he can't understand, but still, fill his mind with fear and dread.
Once he is close enough, he reaches out to the man, but before touching him, it turns to him.
At first, he thinks it's his father, but then the truth becomes clear it's him. Covered in dirty bandages from head to toes, eyes black with potent red irises.
He is shaken and stumbles stepping back, sitting on the floor as the other he stands up impossibly tall, like a growing shadow.
"You can't escape me, Child" the wicked image speaks, his voice
"No, you are not me, I won't die as he did!"
"It's your fate. You and I are destined to become one and MY actions of today will be your decisions of tomorrow"
"What are you talking about?" Das crawls away, unable to stand up.
The fake Das gives him a macabre smile and points at something behind him, Das slowly turns his head around, and sees what hell must look like.
Mountains of bones and rivers of blood, the sun hid behind a dark circle and the sky darkened, fires raging all around him. But what he can't stop looking at are the heads of everyone he ever loved staring at him on the wooden pikes at a distance.
Freund, Drachen, Lioth.
They look at him with faces filled with pain and anger.
"This is what you will do to them if you stay alive Das, only your death can spare them this caliginous end" the fake Das speaks mere centimeters away from him.
"How? How could I?..."
"Have you forgotten who you are? The blood that runs through your veins? You are a mage Das! Everything you hold dear will suffer and wither the longer you remain in its life"
"I would NEVER do this to them!!"
"The hounds have been set free, and they chase for your soul young mage. They can be lost momentarily, they can be tricked, but they cannot be outrun forever. When the time comes they will catch you, and mutilate you until all whats left is another ravenous dog"
"I...I"
"There is no I, only WE. No salvation, only damnation, and no way to fight back, just submission"
Das looks down at the scorched dirt, as all light banishes and he is returned to complete darkness. It's cold, he smiles.
He had just gone through something similar.
Ida. He saw her as he did when they first met, and how she looked when he last saw her. But this rather than being the last push he needed, made him stop and think.
He couldn't die, not now. Even if he was a threat, if it didn't matter what he wanted, what he wished for, instead of letting this cruel fate twist him and end him, he would laugh in his face.
And as his smile grew, the laughter began to escape from his lips. Short and weak at first, but as the seconds passed it became louder, it wasn't like that of the fake Him, no. It was honest, joyful even if a little painful.
He looks up and sees the vision of his future staring at him blankly, confused. Das stands up and puts a hand on the shoulder of his other self, who now is his same stature, and laughs.
"It's all senseless. It doesn't matter, at all. I will die and go insane before that happens, nothing I do will ever change that" he says as he composes himself "I know this, so I choose to live not for me, but others"
The other Das smiles at him and laughs.
Soon both of them laugh, their voices carrying joy in the freedom of accepting their inevitable end, and the pain it gives them.
Outside, Drachen is growing tired, the seemingly endless sea of ghosts is almost too much, she glances at Das and flies up to him, preparing to teleport them both away from the fight, even if it means condemning everyone else, she won't lose him here.
"I'm sorry" she whispers as the mist begins to swallow them both.
"Stop," Das says, taking her by surprise. He looks at her, more relaxed and calmer than she expected.
She looks at the woman and sees her smiling, just before her youth vanishes, revealing an old and sickened lady that turns into dust.
Das's eyes glow yellow and bellow him a giant magic circle manifests, the ghosts know something is coming and fly away as fast as possible, but for most of them, this isn't enough.
In a blink, from dozens of meters, light shoots out from the ground and turns every ghost caught in its radius into dust. Das screams, cries out in anger, pain, sorrow, joy, all the emotions he had been holding deep inside.
The pain he felt for leaving his mother alone, the anger against a world that calls him a monster, his pain at the inevitable end he will face... and the love he had for his father, that he always had, because he knew deep inside, that everything he did, even if wrong, he did because he was broken, and in an attempt of protecting him from the same fate, broke him.
The world was dark and unforgiving, but his destiny sealed, he wouldn't let those he held dear suffer. He would fight with unshakeable will and unstoppable drive, to not let hope die out.
For him and everyone else.
The light grew in size, beyond the reaches of his magic circle, reaching as far as the cavalry in the outskirts of the town, healing the wounded and badly damaging almost all of the ghouls and ghosts.
Ann and the Phantom to see the dome of light expand, swallowing them both whole.
The orb on Das's staff, cracks.
And then silence.
As sudden as it came the light disappears, leaving an exhausted Das to collapse on the ground, falling unconscious.
"DAS!!" Drachen returns to her human form and kneels in front of him, grabbing him and trying to sense if something was wrong with him, but finds that everything is normal, in fact, better than ever.
"What happened?" one of the knights pops the question as he looks at his surrounding companions.
A retching sound makes them look at one of the ghouls, vomiting black tar on the ground in front of him, his mangled body still smoking from being inside the dome of light.
Soon, all nearby ghouls join, vomiting on the ground as their bodies change and snap back to the form they originally had.
"Quick, help them!" one of the knights says as it gallops forward to the unconscious people that have returned to their human forms.
Many knights join him, getting off their horses and inspecting the townsfolk, while others ride deeper inside the town, carefully looking up but seeing no ghost in sight.
The hawk general looks around him as well, when he sees two figures fall from the sky, he points forward and rides off together with a large number of his knights.
Ann crashes on a street while the Phantom hits a roof, while she is unconscious he is still awake, but hurt.
He takes a single look at his surroundings and knows that the fight is lost, so his body turns into a dark cloud and vanishes, his red eyes the last thing to disappear.
Someone is looking at him. But he doesn't recognize these eyes, they belong to a woman he has never met but has seen many times before, he knows this even if all he sees are her eyes. Purple eyes.
Das wakes up, he is resting beneath a cloth tent, he raises and sees he is the only one inside, shirtless and with a blanket on he becomes embarrassed and thanks to the Light for the nearby basket with his clothes. The sound of carts and people can be heard outside the tent.
Once he is dressed, with staff in hand, he walks out and finds himself outside of the town, on the beach to be precise, his tent is one of many, while alchemists run around on their brown robes, carrying large square backpacks filled with everything they need to treat the wounded.
There are mourning families near pyres of the slain ghouls, while also crying mothers and husbands embracing their loved ones that returned to normal.
"Das!" Drachen's voice is always a pleasant surprise to the young archmage, who turns to her and opens his arms as she falls from the sky to hug him tightly "I'm so relieved that you are alright"
"I don't remember much, what happened?"
"We beat the Phantom, he escaped but..." she lets him go and looks at the surrounding tents "half of the town managed to survive"
Das can barely believe what he just heard.
The Phantom escaped, but the town is still alive.
He won.