Pierre Acre took a leisurely whiff, taking in the nostalgic smell of chalk, paper, and rotting wood. It seemed only like yesterday he was one of the sleepy faces in the small crowd.

Young, restless, and an unwilling hostage in every class, especially history class. Not that he was not fond of history, but he would rather learn of it in the comforts of his own home, reading a book on his bed or watching a documentary on TV on his couch.

Now he had become a history professor. It had been three years since he decided to join the faculty of the small university in his hometown. And he had not stopped sympathizing with every tearful yawn and each sleepy scratching of the eye. The charms of learning history seldom work on the minds of the youth, who were yet to care for the future and thus would have even lesser interest in the past.

The ceiling fan whirred a lullaby in the silence. Most of his students were either blankly staring at the air, or outright napping on their desk. The expected result of strictly sticking to the book, citing people they don't know, and events they don't care about.

"How many of you here believe in demons?" Pierre asked.

The out-of-the-blue question had the desired effect. The students snapped out of their reverie and looked in his direction. Slowly and one by one, several right hands were raised.

Only half of the class believed in demons. Pierre was surprised. Greystone was a small city, in a largely rural part of the country, and he thought was quite religious. Times were changing indeed.

"That's less than I have anticipated. Some of you I saw last Sunday at church," he remarked, and he sounded like a disappointed Sunday school teacher.

That earned giggles from his class and now, everyone was paying attention.

Time to do the risky part- leading the conversation back to the topic at hand.

"The Muradic Empire, however, was very religious like many medieval societies. And most of their soldiers, if not all, believe in the existence of demons."

Pierre paused and scanned the room and it was filled with a mostly captured audience. "On the other hand, the peoples of the tribes of the region of Calmon had a completely different belief system. And they took advantage of the empire's faith, when Emperor Alechor the Second, launched an invasion into their territory."

"What do you think they did, Hannah?" Pierre directed the question to the girl on the second row, who still had her eyes outside the window.

Hannah lazily pivoted her head and looked at her professor. She shrugged but answered. "I don't know, wore demon costumes to scare them off?"

"Exactly! Correct!" Pierre said, silencing the chuckles the answer garnered, "The heavily outnumbered and ill-equipped tribesmen set up an ambush in the Banadura Forest, where the large imperial army had to march through to reach further into their territory. The tribesmen sounded their drums and their scream whistles. And in a coordinated attack, they charged out of the forests, painted red or black, and wore animal horns atop their heads."

Pierre continued the story, with Hannah wearing a fascinated look, and the rest of class hanging on every word. "The result was devastating. The imperial soldiers thought that hell had come for them. Their officers could do little to keep them in formation. They panicked, trying to flee instead of fighting, and it made them sitting ducks. Three thousand soldiers were massacred in that forest, and the rest who managed to flee swore never to return. And that was the first and last attempt, ever made by the Muradic Empire to invade Calmon."

"The result? Until now, the Calmonians managed to preserve much of their culture, and remain unique to the rest of Enasses." Pierre concluded to a thoughtful crowd.

It was another successful maneuver. He would need more of it. They have barely started with the course.

"I just don't believe it," remarked Robert Green, one of the university's athletes and could afford to be a little rude. Although, Pierre believed, it was just him being aggressively social as usual.

 "These are trained soldiers, you know… tough men. I don't think they would be easily scared like that. I mean momentarily frightened maybe, but total collapse…"

"Well, demons are quite scary…" Pierre calmly explained, "Imagine yourself inside the dimness of that forest, Robert. You know you are marching in enemy territory and you are watching for the slightest movement behind the tree line and the bushes, anticipating a possible ambush."

"Then suddenly…" he widened his eyes and gestured with his hands, to add a dramatic flair, "you hear drums beating, and ugly guttural screams. Your march halted, and you heard nervous murmurs around you. You and your friends have never experienced this before."

"And as if you were not scared enough, you saw the bushes stir. Then out came someone with red skin and horns on his head!"

The students gasped in surprise. He did not know they were that invested in his story and he would soon find out that they weren't. He had been focusing on Robert and he did not notice the rest of the class. They were no longer paying attention to him, instead looking outside the window.

It was different from earlier. They weren't looking away because they were bored. Their pale faces and frozen stares expressed anything but boredom.

He followed their gazes towards the large windows and saw something that should not be there.

The windows overlook the other half of the city. And where there should only be the blue sky above the buildings, and the backdrop of the distant mountains, there was a giant hole.

Inside it was utter darkness, but it was not a black hole.

It was not round, instead resembling a large rip on a cloth or a large slit wound on the skin. And instead of sucking things in, it poured things out small things from where they were looking, but moving living things, in varying colors, all with horns and some with wings.

He moved closer to the glass windows. His mind struggled to wrap around why the sky was suddenly pouring out demons.

It must be a dream. Not too long ago, he was talking about demons. Most dreams connect scenes with a related topic, even with how outrageously they do not make sense.

He scratched his eyes, and after the blurriness, saw the same thing. He looked below him and he could see his lower body- grey slacks and black shoes. He pinched himself on the hand and felt pain.

Pierre stepped back. As if things had not been confusing enough, something appeared right in front of his eyes. A floating transparent screen, that contained a body of text.

[You have been chosen by the Divine Interface]

[You have been bestowed a Relic]

He huffed in disbelief when he saw a box appear out of thin air. The red ribbon around it unraveled as it collapsed, and dropped something cold and circular onto his hesitant palms.