"Damn it, Aleorn!" Or'do caught me as - not for the first time - I staggered, nearly collapsing. "Being impetuous is my job!" His mirth was cold as my slowing heart, and just so perilously close to lifelessness. We had managed to reach the gate of fog behind which Micolash, Host of Nightmares waited, yet at the threshold, with hand raised to cross, I had doubled over instead, blood and ash streaming from my lips and curling around the edges of my wide eyes.

"You can't fight like that!" Or'do protested as I raised my hand once more. Is this my fault? He wondered. Did my selfish desire damn him to a bleak life of misery and anguish?

Forcibly, I straightened. Flame surged along my weary limbs like coals stirred to life by soft, affectionate breeze. My legs trembled, my heart pealed its arrhythmic thunder through my cold veins, yet I forced myself to stand all the same.

"Our last battle draws near. I cannot let you face it alone."

"Micolash? Surely he isn't our last foe!"

"No, but quite near it. Beyond him looms the final adversary before we can at last face the purest form of Darkness to inhabit this realm." I coughed, a ragged mire of ash and blood rising in my throat, and burning fiercely as I forced it back down. Inside me, the Dark and Cinder flared, warring in their silent way, and ravaging the battlefield that was my body. Once more, I pressed my hand against the gate of fog.

"You've nothing to prove, Aleorn!"

"Not to you perhaps." I strode through its frigid depths, and passed into the candlelit home of Micolash. "Yet to myself, much still remains."