Leaving Afterlife proved to be bittersweet for Erik and Jessie both. They planned to see each other again soon, but they would both miss Afterlife. It had been a nearly-three month vacation with good friends. They would also miss Nana a lot. She had helped them quite a bit, and she had prepared them as best she could for the next part of their lives.

  Erik didn’t have much to go back to, as his mother was dead, likely his father as well, and his friends thought him long dead. He would search for his father, if only to tell him he was alive, and that he shouldn’t mourn him any longer.

  While he cared for his old friends, they had likely already grieved him and moved on. Erik didn’t feel right exploding back into their lives with magical powers only to leave them again, and so the first part of his life had ended. Part two was just beginning, and it promised magic.

  A portal had appeared in the centre of the plaza where Nana’s shop was located. Hosu couldn’t see the portal, and Nana had said that since she came to Afterlife after the pair of humans, hers wouldn’t open yet. The portal would stay active for one week, after which it would violently suck in Erik or Jessie if they hadn’t gone through it yet.

  Erik and Jessie didn’t actually see the same portal, as Erik’s portal and Jessie’s were two different ones, and they couldn’t interact with the other’s portal at all. Jessie decided to stay a little while longer, so Erik would be the first to leave, planning to go through the portal the same day it appeared.

  He knew it was because of Hosu. The women had grown to really love each other, and now they likely would never see each other again. If possible, Erik would have left sooner just to let them have more time together. He loved them both, and wanted both to be as happy as possible. He would at least see Jessie again, as they had planned for Erik to travel to the UB in the following days.

  Hosu, who he had learned so much from, and heard so many stories from, was the most difficult to say his farewells to. He could only hope they would meet again one day. Erik turned back around towards the three women seeing him off, smiled at them and waved. He then fell backwards into the portal and disappeared.

  Memories of fire, smoke and wailing woke Erik from something resembling sleep. It had been so long since he had thought about the day he died, and it had been even longer since he felt anything about it. His body shivered at the thought, until he thought about his mother, burning alive right in front of him.

  Without delay, tears gushed from his eyes. Around him was nothing but burned ruins of the place he used to call home. Even the fireplace was mostly crumbled to ash, with only a few bricks and a small amount of concrete holding its old form. The amount of destruction from the fire was enormous, much more than Erik thought possible. He’d thought at least the foundation was supposed to hold, but everything was gone.

  Erik got up to his feet from the horizontal position he woke from. He awoke right where he remembered dying, though the debris that had fallen on him back then had been moved, probably to recover what was left of his corpse. When considering that, why didn’t he wake up where his remains were? He was happy he didn’t wake up in a grave far beneath the surface, of course, but he wondered why that was.

  Looking at the blackened remains of his house, there probably wasn’t much left of his corpse anyway, and most of it might already be scattered to the wind.

  It was nighttime when he returned from Afterlife, and all he could sense was a slight tingle on his chest and a weak breeze on his skin. There weren’t any lights around, so Erik struggled to walk around the house, where debris littered most of the ground beneath him.

  He had of course woken up completely naked, as the clothes he wore the days of his death weren’t magical and weren't resurrected like he had been. He had already figured as much, so he was only slightly disappointed. He would have to find some clothes somewhere and come back in the morning, as he had to search for his father. If he could find somewhere he could go online to read the newspaper from the day he died, he might not even need to come back.

  The problem was, he didn’t have any money or clothes, and he would be trying to lie low, hoping he wouldn’t get recognised by anyone. He lived in a rather small town in the norwegian region of the Scandinavian Empire, and when the town and the immediate vicinity around it had less than ten thousand inhabitants, a large percentage of them would be able to recognise him. He didn’t want to have to explain magic and resurrection to anyone.

  As Erik reached where the main entrance of the house used to be, he sighed inwardly at his own stupidity. It wasn’t like there were any walls blocking his exit anywhere, so why had he headed towards the door? Before he could step over the threshold, however, he heard a weird snarling sound, like that from a massive dog in a bad mood.

  Erik moved his foot back from the doorway, and retreated back to the fireplace, hiding behind what little material there was left. As the snarls closed in, he also started hearing massive footsteps, and it sounded like there were a lot of them, unless they just walked very short steps quickly. As the dark figures walked past his house, he could make out two absolutely massive dogs, walking around and sniffing the air.

  The two dogs didn’t seem to notice him, and continued on their way towards the town proper. Those weren’t normal dogs at all, they were way too big and massive, and when they got closer, the sounds they made sounded… wrong, somehow. Erik had other things to do than being eaten alive by these dog-like things, so he decided to leave a few minutes later, when he couldn’t hear anything. He just had to keep alert.

  All the neighbours’ houses were completely dark, and even the streetlights were down for the count, it seemed. It wasn’t too unusual, but the timing was bad. He snuck through the gardens of four houses, hoping they had left some clothes out to air, like people did in the movies. No luck. Everyone would certainly have dryers.

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  The fifth house he snuck around, belonging to some of his parent’s friends, Erik noticed something odd. He had gone around the back of the house, not seeing anything out of the ordinary while looking for clothes, but when he got back to the front of the house, he noticed the door into the house was shattered in pieces.

  In the dark, that was all he could see, but as he ventured closer, he also noticed a broken window, and massive claw marks along the outer wall.

  He bent down underneath the window, holding his breath and focused intently. He couldn’t hear anything, so it probably wasn’t from those dog-things he saw earlier. If it had happened a few days ago, maybe the house would be empty for now?

  Erik took a chance, and walked into the house. More large claw marks filled the walls and furniture, and the whole place was a mess. There were certainly not anyone here anymore, and Erik hoped they weren’t home whenever this happened.

  He walked around the ground floor, looking for a bedroom or closets, but didn’t find any. He saw two sets of shoes in the entrance hall, neatly placed on a shoe rack. Back at the entrance was a staircase he climbed, finding three bedrooms on the second floor. He knew the couple had a kid in his pre-teens, so when the first door he opened looked to belong to a young boy, he closed the door again and went into the next one across the hallway.

  This looked more like a master bedroom, as it was both larger than the kid’s room, and much more simplistic. It had a wide wardrobe, a large bed and one night stand with a small lamp on it, and that was it. Erik tried turning the lights on, but it seemed the power was out, or a circuit had triggered its failsafe.

  Erik opened the wardrobe and found a man’s shirt, some underwear, socks and jeans. He wasn’t happy about wearing another man’s boxers, but it was an emergency. If his life depended on it, he would use someone else’s toothbrush if he had to, though the circumstances where he had to brush his teeth to survive would likely be more complicated than the situation he was currently in.

  Immediately dressing himself in whatever he found, he was suddenly much more comfortable, and now just needed to borrow some of the shoes he had noticed from downstairs.

  Back into the second floor hallway, he looked around and found no trace of claw marks or other kind of damage, until he felt a hole in the floor as he stepped on it. It was deep, but not large in circumference. Erik felt around it, and noticed several more in the immediate vicinity. Judging by the distance between the holes, it was likely from the claws of a large paw. If those things had been up here, all they did was walk normally, not like downstairs where they seemed to have mauled everything around them.

  Erik got on his knees, feeling around after more holes, and quickly found more leading deeper into the hallway, where Erik hadn’t been yet. He followed the tracks until the floor felt… oddly soft. And sticky. Without any windows around, this area was pitch black. He couldn’t even see the outline of his own arms, so he felt around, wondering what he stepped on.

  As his right hand touched a cold, rigid object, Erik couldn’t constrain a panicked gasp as he pulled himself back. It had only been a short moment he touched it, but deep inside, he knew what it was he had touched. He just hoped it wasn’t the young kid.

  Several minutes later, Erik had found a flashlight from a kitchen drawer hanging loosely from the remains of the counter. At least the flashlight worked. He had brought the flashlight upstairs, and saw that it was indeed the kid’s body that lay there, all the way at the end of the corridor, right in front of a dresser. What was most worrisome was the fact that the corpse looked far decayed already, and he wondered why he hadn’t smelled anything.

  Erik hadn’t worked in medicine or the police, and he had no experience with the decay of human bodies, but he figured it was at least a month old, maybe more. The troubling part of that was that no one had retrieved the bodies. There was no police tape around. With the front door in ruins, someone had to have noticed that… unless there weren’t anyone around anymore.

  The hour he was there, he also found the boy’s parents. His father was on the ground floor, under the remains of the kitchen table, which was why Erik hadn’t found him the first time around. The mother was in the bathroom adjacent to the master bedroom. Both the kid and the mother seemed to have been running from something, so the father had likely tried to protect them when whatever had done this attacked.

  He was the first to get killed, as his loved ones tried to escape upstairs. Why the mother and the kid had split up, he didn’t understand. He had to admit that he didn’t know what he was doing, and had to leave it at that.

  He did take the father’s phone from his pocket and a charger from their bedroom, in case he found somewhere with power he could charge it, hoping it wasn’t too protected, so he could go online.

  Erik left the house mentally exhausted, planning to head towards the town proper. Normally it was thirty minutes away, but considering the beasts walking around, he had to keep his eyes and ears open, and walk carefully.

  When Erik reached the hill overlooking his hometown, the sky was already a few shades brighter, and the sun would rise in an hour or so. With the additional light from the sky, it wasn’t hard to see the ruins that were his hometown.

  He had suspected as much when he saw several houses similar to where he found the dead family on his walk here, along with several power poles knocked over, the power lines ripped apart. He’d also seen several cars mauled and rolled over.

  All of that was nothing compared to the town proper. There was barely anything left standing. Everything he had known was gone. Not just his family, but his home. The destruction was unlike anything he had seen, and suddenly, finally, his return from Afterlife was all too real.

  He wept for the first time since the fire three months ago, where he and his mother had died. All that was left to do here was figure out if his father had died, either in the fire or whatever calamity had struck his hometown.

  From the hilltop, Erik could also see at least three of the monstrous hounds in the ruins, but more was likely to be obstructed from his view. He couldn’t go to the town proper, but he decided to skirt around the edge, hopefully finding the most recent newspaper or something that would help him understand what was happening.

  He also needed to meditate, as that would allow him to understand his core power, and help him use it, but that was something he could only do when he knew it was safe around. He didn’t dare sit down and meditate with massive, hungry dogs around. He hadn’t even meditated before, and wasn’t sure if he even could, as the number of things racing through his mind would definitely take most of his focus.

  He had yet to look at his Crest since he returned, so he hadn’t even looked at the symbol in the core of the Crest, not that that was what mattered. The symbol would be there for the rest of his life, so he was in no rush just to look at it. He’d felt the tingle of his skin changing on his chest when he returned, but that was long over, so it should be finalised by now.

  His thoughts went on to Jessie, as he hoped her return to life would be met with happier circumstances than his. He soon went down the hill towards the town.