(Seto's POV)

I kept my head down until I reached the back streets. The instant I felt my foot hit the cracked pavement, I took my hood off, standing up tall. This was where I had lived before the poster. This was where I was king.

The poster was what had drove me out of town. It was a wanted poster; the kind you think that you'd only see in old movies. I had never been caught, and I wanted to keep it that way. I had robbed a jeweler’s shop before leaving the town; and I had given the amulet to Adam before I left. It wouldn't have been worth much, anyways.

But now that I was back, I could meet up with some old acquaintances. There were no real friends in the thievery world. We all told each other fake names, too, so that we couldn't be caught if somebody turned out to be a traitor. I had given the name Seto, and people had called me it so much that I didn't even remember my real name anymore. Not that I cared.

I smiled to myself and headed right towards my gang's hideout. Like I said, we weren't exactly friends, but we got along well enough. I got to the hideout; it was an old, shabby-looking building, but it was held up just fine. The only thing wrong with it was a little paint peeling off. Without knocking, I pushed the door open and stepped inside.

“-missing for a while now,” I heard M say. I stopped. M rarely ever spoke, so if he was talking, something big must be going on.

“How can we be sure he hasn't been caught?” somebody else asked. I searched my brain for who it was; Cupquake, maybe? I furrowed my eyebrows. Who had been caught?

“Seto, arrested?” Bodil laughed; his freaky, high-pitched laugh that almost scared me to death. “Are you crazy? He probably just left us for some other group.”

I narrowed my eyes. They thought I had left them, left the one group that I had led. They didn't even sound upset, like they didn't care. Not that I really cared. There were NO friends on the streets.

“So what do we do?” M asked, redirecting the conversation back to where they had begun.

“We move on,” Lykos said. “Seto can handle himself just fine.”

I whipped around and stepped out of the house as quietly as possible before I heard anything more. True, I was never one for my reliability, but I had always come back. And now they were acting like I wasn't.

I started running through the town, my feet all but silent on the asphalt. I had always been proud of my ability to move silently. I didn’t even bother to look where I was going; I took the first turns that I saw, squeezing in between narrow alleyways and broad streets that I didn't even know existed. I opened my mouth, gasping for breath, but still silent. I stopped and looked around me, trying to figure out where I was.

None of the buildings were familiar.

I blinked and scanned again, this time more carefully. Was I... lost??? No, I wasn't. I was Seto. I knew every nook and cranny of this town, every hiding spot, every shop and black market. No way was I lost.

Then why didn't I have a clue where I was?

I took a few steps to the sidewalk, which was being ripped apart by weeds. A small shop stood in front of me. Curious, I squinted to see the tattered banner hanging above it; wherever I was, nobody had come here in a long, long time. It had weird symbols written all over it. I stared at it, trying to figure out what it said, but it made no more sense to me than chicken scratch.

I examined the shop. Curtains were pulled tightly over the windows, and the shop itself was barely one story high, the walls cracked and falling apart. The door was shut. I went up to it and pulled on the handle, but it seemed to be stuck.

It probably was a stupid thing to do, but I kept pulling and jerking the door anyways, trying to get in. Once I had decided to get into some place, sooner or later I managed it. I shoved my shoulder against the door, shutting it tightly, before yanking on it another time. I tugged at the handle. Slowly, inch by inch, the door slid open. A few more pulls and it creaked open, revealing the interior of the shop. Without even looking at it, I stepped through the frame and onto the tiled floor.

The floor seemed to vanish beneath me.

I yelled as I crashed through what had looked like solid floor onto stone. I rolled, taking most of the damage off of my fall, and twisted around to look above me. There was no hole, nothing to show that I had fallen. There was only a stone ceiling.

I took deep breaths, trying to steady myself. My eyes adjusted to the dim light fairly quickly, and I got a look at my surroundings. I was in some enormous room with perfectly smooth stone making the walls, floor and ceiling. Pillars were placed in uniform lines throughout the room, though some were crumbling apart. One had simply fallen down, making a spiderweb of cracks on the stone.

I took a hesitant step forward. When nothing happened, I took a few more, trying to figure out the purpose of this place. I looked around but tried not to get too close to the pillars; if one of them fell on me, I'd be good as dead.

Out of the corner of my eyes, I caught movement. I whipped around to get a better look at it, but it was just fog. I blinked. Fog, in somebody's creepy basement? I looked closer and saw that it was tinted purple and snaked around on the floor like it had a mind of its own. Darker spots swirled inside of it, the lighter parts almost glowing. I felt my heart start to beat faster. Wherever I was, it was definitely not someplace normal.

The fog started making its way towards me, slowly but gaining speed. I tried to sidestep it but it kept rushing at me. I bit my lip; what if it was a toxic gas? It touched my feet and the instant it did it began swirling around my legs, climbing higher and higher until it reached my face. I held my breath for as long as I could, trying not to let the fog in, but eventually I couldn't hold it anymore. I meant only to take a short, quick breath, but the instant my mouth opened the fog flooded into it. It had an odd taste to it; something like oranges and raspberries mixed, only more exotic and strange. It forced its way down my throat before I could stop it. It burned down my throat, and tears formed in my eyes at the pain. The second some of the fog had entered my mouth, the rest of it receded back onto the floor, wandering away form me. I gasped and watched it disappear, clutching my stomach. I felt the palms of my hands go numb for a second, like they were asleep, but they stopped tingling almost immediately.

The room did a three-sixty, rearranging everything. I shut my eyes and waited until I was sure that everything was back to normal before I opened them. What had that purple stuff been, anyways? I was pretty sure it wasn't fog. A gas intended for nausea, maybe? But I felt fine now. I straightened, letting my hands drop to my sides. I bit my lip. Some purple fog didn't matter anymore; what mattered now was finding a way out of this place.

I let my footsteps echo as I started wandering around the room. It was a lot bigger than I had thought; even with my eyes somehow adjusted perfectly to the low light level, I couldn't see a wall in any direction. The pillars were cracked and broken, giving the eerie impression that the entire room would collapse at any second.

I started walking faster, trying to find a wall. From there I could edge my way around the room. But it was hard to walk in a straight line with all the pillars, and even after walking for a full minute the wall wasn't in sight. I narrowed my eyes. Did this place even have an end? I whipped around, like something might have changed behind me, but if anything the room was even larger. In the process of turning around, though, my hand touched one of the pillars.

I stepped backwards a few steps as it wobbled. I watched it carefully and continued backing up, only to find yet another, even wider pillar behind me. The first one started to fall, slowly, slowly towards me. I tried edging my way around the second pillar, but my feet felt like they were frozen in place. Desperately, I thrust my hands out in front of my face, hoping that the pillar would only break my arms and leave the rest of me intact. I jerked my head away and closed my eyes instinctively, waiting for it to hit me.

It never did.

Was I dead? I opened my eyes, turning my head to see why the pillar wasn't falling. And I almost screamed.

Purple fog, or whatever it was, was coming out of my hands. As in, it was just erupting from the palms of them, shooting forward. The fog was wrapped around the pillar, holding it in midair. Hesitantly, I twitched one of my fingers. The fog shifted ever so slightly and the pillar rotated a little to the right. I curled one of my hands into a fist, and the fog wrapped even more tightly around the pillar, lifting it a little higher into the air. Feeling bolder, I pulled my hands in very slowly and then shoved them forward extremely fast. The pillar went flying across the room, banging into another before clattering to the ground. I let my hands rest at my sides, and the fog was sucked back into my palms.

I stared. What had just happened? I raised my hands to my face, examining them. They looked perfectly normal, but when I focused on them for too long, the fog started to ooze out of my palms, wrapping around my hands. When I lowered my hands, the fog vanished again. Thinking about what had just happened, I focused on a small rock lying on the floor, my arms slightly raised. I didn't look away from the rock, but out of the corner of my eye, I saw something purple heading towards it. The fog wrapped itself around the rock. I raised my hand a little, and the rock started hovering above the ground. I pulled my hand in closer, and the rock floated towards me. The second I looked away from it, the rock clattered to the ground and the fog disappeared.

That was... scary. I suddenly felt claustrophobic, even though the room was humongous. What I has just done didn't make any sense. I closed my eyes and felt the room around me spin and warp. I felt like throwing up. I just wanted to get out of here... back to the surface... back to the streets...

The sick feeling disappeared. I opened my eyes and looked around me; I was standing right in front of Quentin's house. Small wisps of purple fog drifted along the ground. Scared, I let my hands drop and pull the fog in. What had just happened?

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, trying to cam down and sort my situation out logically. The thing was, no logic was involved. You can call it what you want, but I was fairly sure what the fog was: magic.