"Brenda, wait!" A hoarse voice called from a distance.

I snapped my head in the direction. No one was around, save the dimly illuminated canopies in the area. The crescent moon had risen to its peak as well. I had left my friends behind some minutes ago and was headed back to our camp.

My pace increases, heart thumping and galloping down the forest path.

"Brenda, wait!" 

I paled, hands quivering. This time , it was my mom's voice.

I was more than an hour away from Kira and Nichole, and three hours more from camp. My initial courage withered and my palms grew wet with sweat. 

Stuck in the way, my sight settled on a mist ahead. 

Gathering like a cloud, it floated down and parted forming shapes in motion. It appeared so real, yet dreamy. Moments later, a crowned figure turned sharply to my direction, eyes heavy with a bag below. I could imagine he hadn't slept for weeks.

He held my sight. I felt hexed and in that moment, I wished I had listened to my mom. I shouldn't have ventured this far away from them.

" If I survive, I will do better." I thought, trying to shut my eyes.

" make room," he said in the voice of a multitude, distorted and disorienting. He repeated with growing intensity, until it deafened my hearing. I cupped my ears in fear.

“Hey!”

I jerked, terrified. " What are you doing?" Nichole asked, baffled. I hadn't heard them coming, and although I was scared out of my body, I was grateful they came.

" We have to get back now," she said, " don't know why we wandered so far." 

I couldn't agree more. I turned to where the man and his people were, and the mist was completely gone. My breathing was still laboured. Everything was weighing down on my sanity.

I carefully walked in their middle until we got to camp and all along, his words never left my hearing. " Make room, " It went on calling.

Everyone had gone to bed in their tents. I took a deep breath and exhaled, trying to stretch before a sudden rhythmic cough startled us and steered away the peace overflowing within me.

Six feet tall with a neatly trimmed beard that made him look years younger except for the greys glowing in his low cut. Our tour guide was a friendly man but the aura he exuded in that moment was a cold rebuke. Can't say I didn't deserve it. Yet, I couldn't get myself to say sorry.

" It won't happen again,"I stuttered, crestfallen. 

Maybe it was because, for a moment, I saw my parents in him.

" Go to bed, it's late," he said and disappeared behind one of the tents. My company lumbered into their tents at once. I tarried, and once they were gone, I sought for him and found him seated on a fallen bough.

“ You are not inside.”

" Someone has to stand guard, " he replied. I nodded and went mute.

“ Do you have something to say, young lady?”

And that was my greenlight. “How much do you know about this land?”

" Just enough to know how dangerous it is for three young women to be out so late," he berated. I kicked back a tear trying to mist my eyes. I have despised my parents reprove since the death of my little brother, but now I longed for it.

" It is home to an ancient civilization that disappeared in a week," he continued," some people say that internal strife was their destruction. Others say that one of their own unleashed something from hell..."

“ A demon?”

He scoffed," a legion led by an arch prince. My father told me that the one who unleashed him worshipped him as prince of the sky, but when hell devoured the land and his people before his eyes, he called him Diesarak, meaning, the one who brings death, and breathed his last.

That's enough for one question. Now go back to bed...and prepare to leave at dawn alongside your friends."

My feet went cold. “ But we are to stay for a week, right?”

" You shouldn't have come. You are not meant to be here," he deadpanned.

I protested, and he grabbed me by the collar. “ I can smell him on you.”