Desperate screams and growling roars from burning buildings echoed through the remaining town. Home, once bustling with life and laughter, had become a raging battlefield. The cobblestone bridge lay in pieces in the turbulent water, some pieces already dragged downstream. Some houses were burglarized, others had disappeared through a hole in the earth. Some were just razed to the ground, now only leaving a pile of dust behind.

What was once an organized town had now become the definition of chaos. People were running around like headless chickens, not knowing what to do or where to go.

Birds were circling through the air, crowing just as loud as the people screamed on the ground. Men, women and children ran around in fear dodging the skeletons that invaded the streets. Like an undead army, they marched around with swords, cutting down people like bushes.

A strong wind howled in the background, almost inaudible because of the other noises, but indisputably present. Trees bend and windows shattered from its force. It lasted only seconds before the wind died again. Then a dark man appeared out of nowhere in the middle of the town center right in front of what used to be Julio's café. His red golden hair stood out against the dark sky. His cape, just like his long hair, flapped about in the wind tunnel that surrounded the godly looking man. He drew a big sword from behind his back. As if on cue the blade flamed up in bright blue and red flames the moment it left the touch of his body.

Who this stranger was wasn't clear but he started cutting down skeletons faster than the human eye could follow. Not that it seemed to matter, the mystery man seemed to be a skeleton magnet; every skeleton in sight was now on its way towards the man in the center of the fight. Even though he might be the perfect fighter, the amount of skeletons that absorbed him in their endless numbers were too much to handle, even for the godly knight.

A bit further a blonde woman in her late thirties ran over the filthy path, eyes filled with tears of fear and despair. Distracted by the fight scene between a police officer and a skeleton, the woman tripped over a lifeless body. She jumped up before her body fully touched the ground. Another fearful scream filled the already chaotic air. Her eyes darted around, looking for possible near threats. None in particular seemed to catch her eye, which made her stop running for a minute and catch her breath. Her clothes were dripping from the filthy mud in the puddle.

She looked up to the gray sky, the dreary rain cleaning away the muck on her tainted face like a natural shower.

"Please, make it stop," she fell to her knees. The puddle splashed around her, leaving even more mud stains on her once beige trousers. "Lucifer!" Her broken voice got lost in the screaming war noises. Her shoulders dropped in defeat, her muscles relaxed and her head fell down leaving a single sound behind: a broken whimper.

The soft cry lingered on in Mykayla's head. She sat up straight on the second-handed mattress. A layer of sweat covered her forehead and a few strings of hair clung to her cheek. Her breathing was rapid and heavy like she just ran a marathon. She clenched her fist in anger and gritted her teeth onto each other; she hated feeling powerless.

"You okay?" The manly voice came out of nowhere.

Out of reflex, Mykayla swung her clenched fist towards the intruder of her personal space. Her knuckles hit someone's cheekbone with full force. A cringing crack resounded through the otherwise silent cabin.

A phone lit up and showed a double-folded man moaning in pain on the wooden ground. Who the hell-? Right, Luna's friend. Tim? Toran? Whatever.

Her little sister awoke grumpy in the other corner of the room from the sudden sounds.

"What is going on?" She asked in a groggy morning voice.

"She hit me," the farmer croaked in pain. His hands were putting pressure on his right cheek.

"Wait, what?" Luna blinked a few times to adjust to the presence of the light coming from Thomas's phone. This while she tried to wrap her head around the abrupt wake-up call. "I'm not even awake yet and you guys are already trying to kill each other?" A deep tired sigh left her younger sister's chest. "Can't we all just be nice and work together now that we're a team?"

"Excuse me, a team?" Mykayla looked at her sister questionably. She still didn't trust Thomas - that was it! -, even though Luna seemed absolutely certain about his innocence. She always was, until it was too late and the damage was already done. She would learn though, in time, that people weren't to be trusted.

"Yes, yesterday we became a team, Myka. So can we just work together instead of against each other?"

"We're not a team, he's just the lost puppy looking for his owner but eventually ends up happy with anyone as long as he's not alone."

Luna sighed in defeat. Mykayla knew they would never agree in that area, but she also wouldn't stop teaching her sister the best ways to stay alive. Luna had always been protected by their parents. She had lived in that prefect, protected, little bubble. Luna didn't know what it was like out here, in the real world. It wasn't shiny and warm and safe, it was cold and hard and dangerous. You got hurt if you weren't careful. Luna needed to learn to be careful!

"Great, all I get for caring is a punch in the face and even more crap thrown my way," Thomas huffed annoyed. Mykayla ignored his comment.

She shook her head and stood up. She wasn't in the mood to fight with her sister, but that didn't mean she would trust Thomas.

"Can somebody please explain to me what happened?" Luna sighed.

"He creeped up on me in my sleep," Mykayla explained, heaving her shoulders. "It was self defense."

"What? That's not true, I was not creeping up on you." Thomas pushed himself to half-sit. "You were turning and breathing heavily in your sleep. I just wanted to check if you were alright. Next thing, I'm getting punched in the face," he winced. He rubbed over his right jaw, moved his mandible left and right. He seemed fine though.

Mykayla groaned, annoyed. Was she the bad guy again? She shook her head in disappointment.

Luna's eyes called for hers. Her angry frown had dropped and a sympathetic sigh had taken its place. "Are you okay?" She asked, her tone soft and caring.

"Of course I'm not, but that's nothing new," Mykayla tried to play it off as nothing special and important, but somehow she had a feeling everyone was seeing right through her façade.

This type of nightmares scared her. Mykayla's hand was still clenched strongly in a fist around her blankets, and the muscles around her mouth were pressed into a thin line.

"Was it the same as always?"

Luna cared a lot about her, her soft and sweet tone made that crystal clear. She had always cared, even after their parents had banned Mykayla from ever returning to their town. Luna had visited, brought flowers, and told her town gossip. But there was a hint of fear as well, her little sister wasn't very good at hiding her feelings.

"Yup. Or at least, nothing new in regards to content," she rolled her shoulders, again trying to play it off as if it wasn't anything serious. But it was, it really was. The tension in her shoulders, and the pressing headache of the truth told her exactly how real those visuals were. It was going to happen. Soon. Very soon.

"But something was different?" Luna pressed on.

Mykayla responded with a huff. "Same as last time, only more detailed and more cohesive. I'm telling you, the end is getting nearer. If we don't find Lucifer and stop him soon, nothing will be left of this town."

Mykayla stood up. She was getting restless, sitting here and doing nothing was not going to get them anywhere.

Luna nodded. She was grateful that Luna understood, or at least to some point. She couldn't really, not anyone.

"Can anybody explain to me what is going on?" Thomas asked, following Mykayla's lead.

"Thomas, my sister has a gift-," Luna began.

"Luna!" Mykayla interrupted. Luna's trust in other people was getting annoying.

"Myka!" Luna responded, her eyebrows pulled up in a 'try me'-look. "He's part of our team now, he should know about it."

"I disagree. You might trust him, but I don't. You think I forgot that he fits our ghost's description perfectly?"

Luna turned to Thomas and asked straight out: "Have you ever killed or kidnapped anyone?"

Thomas's eyes turned huge, then looked from Luna to Mykayla and then back again. "Seriously?" He asked. A silence settled. "Of course not!"

Mykayla pulled her eyebrow up, still not believing him. He might just be a really good liar. Psychopaths were really good at hiding that part of themselves. She had read that in one of the many books her grandmother used to bring with her from the big city.

"See?" Luna proudly said. "He's innocent. Can we now move on from your paranoia? You said that time is running out, so let's not waste anymore of it on this nonsense. I want to find Vanessa alive, if you don't mind."

Mykayla wanted to go against her sister, but when she saw the fear in her sister's eyes, she dropped it. They both had their own reason's to find the skeleton ghost, and both of them wanted to find him as quickly as possible. Taking the risk in trusting Thomas might be for the greater good, and it would make Luna happy. She had smiled more since he was here, so maybe it was time for Mykayla to give him the benefit of the doubt.

"Fine," she grunted, still making it clear she didn't like it. "Tell him."

Luna smiled. "So, Myka has a gift-"

"more like a curse-," Mykayla interrupted.

"a curse then," the younger girl continued, rolling her eyes.

Thomas seemed thankful for Luna's effort to explain a few things.

"Ever since she was a child, she has had these visions. Until now, it has always been the same one. But these last few days, they've been getting clearer, more detailed, which presumably means that the Grand Tragic of Home is getting closer with the day. At least that's what Mykayla believes," Luna received a frown from her.

Mykayla sat up straighter in her bed and carried on with the explanation. She told them about her dream, of how Home was overrun with skeleton's. About the godly figure that came to their rescue, and about the woman calling for Lucifer to make it stop.

"After years of research, I know this character. He keeps popping up in all different kinds of books, in all different kinds of religions. Lucifer is only one of his names, but it always comes down to the same thing. It's about the devil. There is this book I hunted down, from a collector. It's old, like real old," Mykayla stood up and went to one of the cabinets atop the kitchen counter. There she pulled out a manuscript, the pages on the verge of decomposition. "The author writes about Lucifer and the underworld. Everything fits perfectly; he has an army of skeletons, and he has a right hand man who always wears a skeleton mask, called the skeleton ghost. Luna's description was similar to the description in the book. We need to stop him from finishing the job before it's too late."

Thomas looked at her, the way her parents used to look at her. Like she was crazy. A wave of rage built up inside her, but before she could lash out, the farmer stepped forward and took the book in his hands. He started flipping through it.

"What is his job?" It was a simple question but a crucial one nonetheless.

Thomas had asked it with such seriousness, that for a second, Mykayla was speechless. She hadn't realized how much she expected people to think she was crazy. How was she supposed to react?

"Conquering the world, I guess. I don't know, my dream didn't really give me an opportunity to ask questions," she responded with a snide remark. Immediately, she felt sorry for her tone. Not that she was going to admit that to him.

"It was just a question," he responded defensively. "You might think that I'm some stupid farmer," Mykayla almost nodded in agreement, but decided against it, "but I would be a lot more stupid if I didn't ask about it in the first place."

That silenced Mykayla. He was right, and however annoying it was, it planted a seed of respect inside her heart. Again, not that she would ever tell him that.

"So what else do I need to know?" He asked, still flipping through the pages filled with text and black-and-white images; some of battlefields, others of skeleton's or weapons.

Luna and Mykayla looked at each other in silent confirmation. Luna nonchalantly pulled up her shoulder simultaneously with a proud 'told-you-so' grin. Mykayla tried to ignore her sister's non-verbal comment, but the corners of her mouth slightly quirked.

"Alright then, you want to know how bad this situation actually is?" Thomas hesitated for a second, but nodded anyway. "You don't easily have nightmares, do you?" A devilish smile appeared on Mykayla's face.

Thomas seemed to consider. Was he doubting himself? Or was he finally going to admit what Mykayla already knew, that he was not fit for this mission, that he was a coward?

Thomas's posture straightened after a long moment. The ghost of crow's feet around his eyes looked tense, it felt wrong.

"I already have nightmares," he pointed in the dark towards the wall next to the front door where the drawing of the skeleton ghost hung. "Of him. How much worse could it get?" It was a rhetorical question, Mykayla knew. She answered anyway.

"A lot. Our ghost is only a pawn in a bigger game," Mykayla said, her snarky comments nowhere to be found.

"Have you ever played chess, Myka? Because I think the skeletons are more like the pawns and the ghost is more like a bishop or horse, maybe even a tower. He's definitely not a queen but a pawn, really? You think he's that trivial?"

"Luna, what does it matter what chess piece he is? He's simply a piece in a bigger play," Mykayla grunted annoyed.

Okay, okay. Luna mouthed with her hands raised in defense.

"Anyway, the king," a look towards Luna, "is the devil. To get to him, we need to get to our ghost. But we can talk about his downfall later. First, let me give you a bit of a history lesson."

By now, all three of them had moved towards Mykayla's second-handed mattress with Thomas' phone as the only light source.

"Long ago, and I mean very long ago, begin-of-civilization ago, a group of humans decided to stop wandering the world. They decided to settle in one place and live from the land around them. It didn't take long before other groups that passed their lands joined them in their newfound ideas. Soon the first towns were created. They worked together to survive and it worked. Their idea seemed to be very successful. Years went by and more passersby joined them. With them came stories. Stories about gods, magic and ... darkness. A darkness that was more powerful than the strongest warriors had ever seen.

"Luckily they were simply stories. Or that's what they believed. The peace that the town had kept for many years broke when those stories came to life. It started when a dark entity burst into the town and started killing people. Barely anyone survived, except for the one person that miraculously lived. He fled to the next town and warned others what was coming, but no-one believed him. That was of course until the dark entity burst into their town as well not much later. Nobody knows how long it lasted but somehow the dark entity stopped his killing spree after a while.

"This peace and silence lasted for 250 years. Then it started all over again: the dark entity showed up and killed everyone in cold blood. And again, he stopped. Over the years, humanity invented religion. Throughout every religion there were reports from a dark entity that ruled the underworld or something alike. His name changed from time to time and from place to place, but the similarities were always striking: the devil loved, and even ruled, death.

"And so every 250 years he returned, killing everyone he came across. Want to hear my favorite part?" Mykayla's voice dripped in sarcasm. "His last killing spree ended 250 years ago."