I opened my eyes to a world on fire. 

Thick, viscous smoke stung my eyes and filled my mouth with its disgusting, greasy texture. I felt it slide over my skin, slipping through my very being as I choked and cowered against the raucous thunder of sound.

Something whistled by my head and I collapsed into a heap before remembering I was inside Peroth's memory and I couldn't be harmed here. 

A short scream of pain and rage joined the ubiquitous roar I couldn't identify the source of. It seemed to emanate from everywhere, from the black earth and the blinding smoke and the lash of heat against my face. The scream came from my right.

Through streaming eyes, I saw the Sins gathered near where I was huddled, their lean bodies little more than darker silhouettes against a sky of crimson and black.

One of the Sins was on his knees, clutching the shaft of an arrow burrowed into the side of his shoulder. I recognized his pale hair and handsome features from the first memory, but I didn't know his name.

"Fucking Wildinians," raged Tehgrair as he swung his sword, breaking the arrow off before dragging the unnamed Sin to his feet. "Don't they understand we're trying to help?!"

All the Sins were covered in soot and dirt and blood. Their clothes had been reduced to tattered, scorched rags, their hair filled with white ash and charred debris. They held weapons in their hands, all blackened by the fire and painted crimson with gore. 

It was difficult to see the creatures against the scarlet sky because of how horrifically red they were. 

"We haven't the time—!" Peroth, shirtless and covered in healing scars, insisted—but his shout was lost to another boom of sound. The earth shook with tremendous vigor, throwing the Sins to their knees. The air, too, was sundered by the vibrations and the smoke was forced to disperse.

I could see the Dreaming now, the ones Tehgrair had labeled Wildinians. They were darker of hair than the other Dreaming I had seen in the past, their armor comprised of burnished, colorless metals with rigid runes carved into the breastplates. They'd been thrown off their feet as well, their bows dropped to the ground. 

A bare stretch of burnt earth separated the Sins and the elves. The air occupying that space began to ripple and stir. Like bubbling, molten plastic, the air appeared to harden and crack—and just as abruptly as the ripple had begun, it shattered. Where there'd once been naught but floating soot and dirt was a large, seemingly impossible portal.

It was a veritable rip in the universe.

Black ichor poured from the realm's injury. Things followed the ichor, crawling from the wound that refused to heal. I cringed as I looked upon creatures similar to Peroth's monster, all of them gangly and twisted in some manner, thin-limbed and hideous, some with fangs like lampreys, others horned and unsightly. Some were winged. They took to the sky as soon as they were free of the tear. Shadows clung to their shriveled bodies in trailing pinions.

Darius's voice reached to me through the abyss of memory, whispering in my ear as if my Sin were truly here in this hell with me. He had told me what these things were. It had been so very long ago, back in Verweald, when the Sin and me hadn't know each other well. "What you think demons to be...are fractus. They are the failed bits of Absolians the Baal couldn't properly raise."

Fractus. These were fractus.

I looked skyward, following the progression of those malformed, flying demons. To my horror, the entire sky was roiling and covered in a myriad of wide cracks. The same tar-like ichor spilled from the sky in grisly waterfalls. 

My god, the entire world was caving in upon itself. This wasn't what I'd expected. Peroth's memory hadn't thrown me into the idyllic Dreaming Isle; it had thrown me into the middle of the Fractus Invasions and the collapse of the Isle. 

The fractus keened like wild dogs and fell upon the downed Dreaming. The screams of the dark haired people and the slap of flesh being torn asunder would haunt my nightmares.

It was Balthier who reacted first. Being taller than everyone but Tehgrair, the sword in his hand was a massive—and terrifying—sight. His entire body jerked as if to throw himself toward the Dreaming, but Tehgrair grabbed him by the arm.

"No," he snarled, blocking Balthier's raised blade with his own. "We are out of time. We cannot linger here to help them further." 

Help? 

One of the large, four-legged fractus had turned from the Dreaming his brethren preyed upon and was lopping nearer the Sins. He honed in on Tehgrair as if sensing the sneering Sin was the self-proclaimed leader of the group. The fractus' distended jaws stretched and it was only moments from sinking its curved teeth into Tehgrair's flesh—when one of the Sins flashed forward, sword drawn. The fractus let out one hell of a shriek as its head went flying.

It corpse hit the ground with a dull, empty thud. Above it, Darius spun his blade once in a familiar circular gesture and splayed fresh blood upon the earth.

"We need to go," he stated as he sheathed the sword. "Before we are too late."

His words sprung the other Sins into action. Together, they holstered their swords and daggers and began to run, leaving behind the visceral carnage and the siren of the Dreaming's dying cries. I covered my ears, unwilling to hear anymore. 

I wanted be gone from this place, to shut my eyes and pretend I wasn't trapped in the middle of a brutal battlefield—but I couldn't. I had to look. I had to watch. In answer to my desperate wishes, the manor had given me this vision. Somewhere in this godforsaken nightmare was some clue, some lesson I was supposed to absorb and take with me. Something here would impart information I needed to save Darius's life. 

The Sins ran across what could have once been a field of untouched grass. Now, it stretched from one end of the scorched horizon to the other, nothing more than an expanse of cold embers and blackened bones. Further west, outside of the Sins' trajectory, a forest waited—its treetop blazing in a row of a million lit torches. The plume of smoke soon devoured the sky and cast the world into darkness.

Still the Sins ran, pressing through the world illuminated only by the raging inferno and its wayward embers caught upon the wind. The roar of sound continued, and as the Sins moved, I realized it was sound of a realm dying. Vacuous and hungry, the hollow roar only grew louder and louder as time progressed.

"Dammit!"

The Sins came to a sudden halt, their swords scraping the edges of their scabbards as they were drawn. Momentarily lost in my own thoughts, I'd failed to see another tear open on the plain before us. More fractus came rushing forth, larger in size than the first, joined by fractus who weren't as malformed and wretched as their brethren. Several of the fractus strolling from the gaping gate took the form of the Dreaming, be it with several peculiarities to their persons.

At the head of the group was a lanky creature of gray, stone-like complexion who had to be over seven feet tall. Horns like those of an ibex curled from his temples, and a navy snake tongue flicked from his savage smile.

His eyes—and the eyes of all the fractus who retained their ocular orbs—were red.

"Ixaliad," Peroth said, breathless from their hurried run. The horned fractus winked at the Sins, his broad chest rising and falling with quiet laughter. He was clearly more intelligent than his screeching, hunched brethren. "Did he seriously let Ixaliad out?!"

"We need to go around," Tehgrair ordered as he wiped splattered blood from his lips and lifted his sword toward a leg of the forest partially obscured by the shifting smoke. "We'll cross there. We haven't the time to deal with his blockade—." 

His order went unheeded. It seemed, when the world was literally falling to pieces, Tehgrair's leadership meant little to the Sins. Darius shot forward with alarming speed, quickly followed by Sethan and—to my surprise—Balthier. Tied to Peroth as I was, I felt his hesitancy, but he soon followed suit, leaving a swearing, cursing Tehgrair behind. 

As soon as Darius leapt forward, Ixaliad moved, unwilling to test the Sin of Pride. Darius's face was riven with anger, his blue eyes blazing with energy and power I'd never know him to have before. The single-edged sword he held seemed to dance in his practiced grip, cleaving through the crazed monsters like they were made of cloth and cotton, not blood and bone.

They're killing the fractus, I thought as the Sins cut a swathe through the twisted beings. Why? I've always been told the Sins were responsible for the Isle's fall—but it's the fractus who are tearing the holes in the void that are causing the realm to disintegrate. The Sins are...trying to stop them?

Darius and his ilk didn't linger to kill all the fractus. I noted that the one named Ixaliad had already abandoned the field, leaving the other fractus as a distraction. The Sins carved a straight path through the amassing demons, ignoring those who fell in behind to block the way we had come. Once through the blockade, the Sins continued running, their bare swords whistling in the wind created by their haste.

Soon we traversed a section of smoldering wood and descended into a gully where a river had once run. The silt beneath the Sins' boots had been baked into a hard, smooth substance similar to the consistency of polished rock. It was difficult to find traction on, so the Sins slid along its length, using sheer grace and dexterity beyond my comprehension to retain balance.

The gully ended in a jagged cliff the Sins leapt from without hesitancy. They landed below in what had been a lake bed but was now yet another field of crenulated earth with hissing embers and corpses dotting its landscape.

A large, impressive structure appeared at the lake's shoreline. The bronze dome gleamed in the firelight, burnished and surrounded by the crumbling remains of intricate carvings. Judging by the worshipful design, I decided the building was a temple of some sort. I imagined that, before the land had been spoilt, the temple must have sported beautiful views of the lake and the distant mountains.

There was another cliff beyond the temple's burning gardens. Below it yawned an immeasurable abyss of swirling, nacreous darkness.

The Sins had stopped moving. Above the Isle's booming death throes flew a thin chorus of sonorous voices joined in a haunting dirge. Their voices twined together in a Song of despair—and anger. I felt the ire in the harsh snap of their syllables, in the sudden depth of their consonants. The Dreaming Sang, and the Isle's remaining energy began to pulsate.

"We're too late," Peroth muttered, his tone crestfallen and disbelieving. The rising sheets of obsidian smoke were caught in the energy's whirlwind, spinning into a fervent storm above the temple's dome. Brown leaves were caught in the swelling maelstrom, slicing the Sins' exposed flesh.

Wincing, I looked to the temple's golden walls. What I had initially thought was moss and vines creeping upward on the structure's pillars was revealed to be more fractus. These creatures were the furthest devolved of all the nightmares we'd come across. They were scraps, little more than the half-thought apparitions that haunt children's nightmares, faceless, formless. They had their ghostly hands dug into the temple's walls, corrupting its very foundation.

The Song continued as the Sin's struggled to near the temple with their arms held to cover their faces. Rocks and sharp pebbles pummeled them and went right through me.

The temple's doors sprang open and shattered against the walls when they caught the wind. An elf stomped from inside, undeterred by the storm even as it tore through his black cloak and platinum braid. His spring eyes dropped upon the Sins, then roved away, uncaring. One of the fractus detached from the temple, trying to land upon the Dreaming Child—but the elf spat a single word in his musical tongue and the fractus exploded in a shower of black droplets.

He walked on without looking back.

The Song was louder now, blending with the sonorous drone of the realm's collapse. It vibrated in my bones and made it more difficult to breathe than it already was.

"We're too late," Tehgrair echoed as the Sins stood in the temple's shadow, looking up at the ruin being wrought by their wretched cousins.

"Pitiful things," the Sin with the shoulder wound said as he tried to work the arrow from his flesh. "To never be whole again." 

Darius stepped forward, a puff of dust rising from beneath his bloodstained boot. "We cannot save it. They've compromised the Song's integrity by stealing the building. It must be destroyed."

"No!" Envy argued, shaking his head. "We cannot defile the temple!"

Wrath stood at his brother's side in a show of solidarity. "Yes," he agreed, nervous gaze flicking over Tehgrair. "There's no other way."

The dirge changed, carried by one voice now. Motion at the doors caught my eye. Two Dreaming Children with hair like flowing silver ran from the building with emerald capes flapping from their broad shoulders. Both men were unarmed, but when they opened their lips, peals of unearthly sounds sprang forth from their lungs.

The Sins were prepared. They threw their hands out, bending the environment's energy with a swift, downward tug of the temperature. Ice formed midair as the resulting spike in kinetic energy mingled with the Dreaming's voices, disrupting the resonances. Their horrid shrieks were still painful, but they lost their crippling effect.

"Stand down," Tehgrair spat, his lips curled in a self-satisfied grin. "There is nothing else for it. We must do this or the entire Realm will collapse and vanish."

The elves came nearer. To my astonishment, I recognized them as Requiem and his brother. They looked exactly as they did in my time, though they were better dressed here than I'd ever seen them before.

"This is your doing!" Requiem shouted as he drew a dagger from a sheath at his belt. "This is your fault! Had you stopped them when you had the chance, none of this would have happened!"

Peroth drew his short sword with begrudging motions and went to the front of our group. Requiem and his brother attacked with spiteful, heart-breaking cries, intent on dying to stop the Sins—but they weren't warriors. The Sins, in all their red-soaked glory, were battle-hardened and unflinching. Peroth struck Requiem in the temple with the blade's pommel while he backhanded the other elf hard enough to render him unconscious. Both slumped to the charred earth, unmoving.

Darius had his arm held parallel to his body with his palm facing the dying temple. He inhaled, wordless, and ice began to spiral outward from his feet, crawling upon the downed elves, snuffing nearby embers with soft hisses.

When he clenched his fist, the air of the writhing storm was rent in two directions. The resulting explosion struck the temple with deafening, fiery force.

The seven Original Sins stood together in shared silence as the fire grew, consuming stone and brick in a way normal flames never could. The singing finally stopped, and from the crumbling building emerged a final elf.

The Cassandra came stumbling forth, coughing, covered in grievous wounds inflicted by the now screaming fractus. Her light hair smoldered, and her eyes—light blue like sapphire, not white—shone with a meniscus of imminent tears.

She didn't have an eloquent speech to deliver, no quips or words of redundant wisdom to speak with her scornful contempt. The woman kneeling at the side of Requiem and his brother wasn't the woman I knew. Her thoughts went unsaid, only released in a guttural, spine-chilling scream of loss and grief as she glared at Darius with immutable hatred.

On the fire raged, building into an inferno by the rapid winds of the maelstrom. The white light burned with unkind intensity, revealing every scratch, cut, scar, and stain on the seven Sins as they continued to watch the Dreaming temple burn to the ground with the fractus wailing in their death.

I watched it all. I watched and held my breath as an entire world succumbed to the fire, the darkness, the void and faded from existence.

I stood by Darius with tears falling from my lashes, our hands so close I wished I could have taken his—but I couldn't. We stood alone, on separate ends of a timeline, worlds apart, and watched the Isle die as an elf woman cried.

"This is our sin brought home," Darius whispered as the fire danced in the reflection of his pale eyes. "Our sloth, our greed—our lust, envy, gluttony, and wrath. Our pride. This is the cost of our sin."

Behind us, I heard Balthier's tremulous voice yell to the stolen heavens, "What have we done?!"

As my vision of that terrible place blurred and dispersed into the nether, I again heard Envy's voice through the vast reaches of time. It wasn't tearful or thready with grief. It was hard, unforgiving.

We are monsters. We are defilers. We will ruin this realm as we ruined theirs. It is inevitable. We will destroy your kind as we destroyed them. I will stop it. I will stop us.

"But...." I murmured into the inviting kiss of oblivion as its mouth hovered near my own, stealing my breath. Losing consciousness, I sighed. "It wasn't your fault...."