Dust pricked her eyes and smoke filled her tired lungs. Mara could feel the bandage around her torso loosen and her wound reopen, but she continued to run without falter towards the burning Academy. 

You are not leaving me behind again.

Her blood boiled and her heart beat harshly against her chest, she could hear it drumming loudly in her ears as everything else seemed to drone out.

Nothing else mattered except for getting inside that stupid building and, God willing, see to it that her brothers are safe.

She heard Five call out her name from behind, but the Sparrow didn't bother. He started this mess, and Mara was dumb enough to go along with it. If she ever did find a single drop of blood on her siblings, she decided she would wring his neck.

Mara tore through the already forming crowd, even elbowing a man who yelled at her, but she could care less. 

A roadblock had already been set up around the building as firefighters worked to extinguish the already dimming flames. Mara silently thanked whoever above that the hellfire didn't last long enough for her to be trapped in the blaze too and she could get in without getting burned herself.

She jumped over the wooden barrier, ignoring the officials shouting at her, and burst through the double doors. The moment she took in her surroundings inside the building, Mara thought had entered the gates of literal hell instead of the familiar Academy hall.

The walls were charred to a crisp black. Smoke trails still emanated off from it and glowed darkly in the flashing red and blue lights from the windows, leaving her with a sense of ominosity. 

The temperature itself had increased a significant amount. Sweat was already starting to bead up around her body, and Mara could hardly breathe from the lack of air coming in.

Pieces of wood and concrete littered the floor just as glass crackled under her feet. In the dimness, Mara could make out the outline of a body by the staircase with chunks of seemingly white concrete. Upon closer inspection, Mara found it to be Jesper surrounded in his own ice.

"Oh God, please no." Mara immediately ran over to her brother, dropping to her knees heavily. 

His dirt covered pajamas was drenched in his sweat, and his chest showed almost no sign of breathing. Fearing the worst, she placed two fingers against the underside of his jaw and released a shaky breath when she felt a pulse, albeit faint. 

She noticed the ice around him was already in the process of sublimation. After a particular incident of dealing with a residential fire, Mara had so delicately learned that dry ice can be a very serious hazard in a small space when it isn't well-ventilated and the ice starts to melt until it turns into carbon dioxide. Once this gas build up in the small area, a person could become unconscious and even die.

At this moment, Luther tore open the door with almost immeasurable force. Five and Diego followed behind cautiously.

"Help me!" She shouted at them, refusing to leave his side. "He's still alive."

Mara didn't care where Luther had came from, but she needed to move the dying man in his arms before he, or even herself, succumb to the fatal emissions.

"Luther, get him out of here." Diego ran ahead towards Mara. Whatever hostility he had prior seemed to vanish as he kneeled and looked over her brother for any needed attention.

"But what about - " Luther wanted to excuse himself, be more in the action she supposed, but Mara was having none of it.

"Get him out of here or I will scorch you in the fire myself." Mara glowered at the huge man.

Luther sewed his mouth shut. The other two boys looked at her like she had murdered her own brother instead, and she knew her eyes had turned red again.

"C'mon." The Sparrow turned to head up the stairs in an attempt to change the subject, and thankfully, they didn't push it.

A deep rumble shook the walls, resulting in a loud crack in the ceiling above. Before Mara could process anything, Diego had pushed her back into the staircase just as the chandelier crashed into the wooden floor below.

"You okat?" Diego stood straight and held up his hand for her to take.

The Sparrow eyed the ground where she once stood, where she could have met the same fate as the chandelier that had broken into hundreds of fragments.

She looked at the man before her, almost flustered at the idea of her being saved instead, but she silently accepted his offer anyway and dusted herself off.

The group had been separated, leaving her alone with Diego and nowhere else to go except up.

"Go on ahead." Five called from over the heaps of shattered glass and broken metal, "We'll take this floor."

Mara only nodded back at him and turned to Diego, who gestured the same before they rushed upstairs.

The second floor could not get any worse than the first. 

Everything was completely seared to the point that the former color of the walls could no longer be distinguished. Small flames still flickered in and around the walls and furniture.

Across the hallway, two or three unrecognizable bodies laid dead on the floor. The entirety of their abdomens were covered with hole marks that Mara could only recognize as Ben's bloody work.

Diego knelt over the corpse nearest to him and felt around it for anything useful. He pulled down the black leather collar of his jacket and a particular tattoo came into view.

It was probably only as big as the width of Mara's index finger and as tall as three fingers. The tattoo itself was of a snake eating its own tail, but at the same time becoming anew. 

"Does this mean anything to you?" Diego asked, looking up at her.

"Not until today."

Mara knew that image from mythology and alchemy books as the infinity snake, or to be more precise, the ouroboros. It signified the unity of all things that of which never will disappear but perpetually change form in an eternal cycle of destruction and re-creation.

However, the way the tattoo was done triggered a vague memory. It looked like one of the figures on the skin of the redhead that tackled her back in Genesis, but her recollection was too obscure for her to be sure.

A heavy noise accompanied by Ben's shouts echoed across the hall, snapping their heads towards the source.

The two ran over, moving past the bodies to what the Sparrow realized to be as Leon's designated room.

Mara pushed open the door and was greeted by the sight of Ben holding a man in the air with one of his eldritch tentacles.

By the sound of the doorknob hitting the wall, he paused his slaughter and turned his head towards the two. His cheeks seemed to be stained with tears, and his white shirt was almost completely red from the amount of blood that covered it .

"Why are you with him?" Hs features shone darkly in the light of the fire as he pointed an accusing finger at the man beside her. "Aren't they the ones who did all this?"

"He's with me." Mara cautiously took a step forward, holding her hands up between the two men before she glanced back at Diego. "He saved my life."

"Are you betraying us? Is that why you've been missing for the past two days?" Ben snapped the spine of the man he held before he completely faced his sister.

"Ben, I'll explain everything later. Please just trust me." Mara pleaded, stepping back unsteadily. Diego tried to get her to move behind him as he took out a knife just in case, but she shook him off.

"Where were you, Mara?" her brother asked, voice wavering when his finger pointed to a body across the room. "Leon is dead because you decided to mess around."

"What?" her voice came out in a whisper. Her eyes trailed the direction of his finger, and true to his word, she saw a familiar body .

It can't be. 

Ben must be confusing him with another dead man.

But as Mara took a few steps closer, as she knelt down and felt the gentle curls and the scar that hung above his eyebrow, she knew without a doubt. 

The floor swayed under her until she could no longer feel the aching of her feet. Her fingers gripped the bloody shirt that clung to his stiff form. She couldn't remember how to breathe, or even what to think. Mara just felt, numb.

She could hear heavy footsteps echo across the hall and the motion of Diego throwing his knife not a second later, the confirmation of his kill coming with a small yelp of his victim.

"We need to go." Diego's voice stood firm on his ground. "We'll be dead meat here."

There was a long pause.

"We can take the emergency exit in my room." Ben said under his breath. "But this doesn't mean I won't kill you when this is all over."

"Fine by me."

A firm yet gentle hand wrapped around her shoulder, and Mara found it to be Diego.

"We need to go." He repeated, but his tone shifted. It was softer, almost a whisper.

Mara nodded silently. She reached inside the pants pocket where she knew she would find his lighter. If the building was to crumble and take him along with it, then Mara had something to remember him by.

She rose from her position, her eyes still not leaving his outline. Tucking the piece into her own garment, she followed the two men out the door and back into the hellish corridor.