Confusion streamed across his mind. With tiny sprouts of anger induced by the previous unknown happenings. All the while something at the back of his head shifted.

"Why!?" He asked. An answer didn't come. However, for the moment, he didn’t care. Three people streamed out of the house and onto the porch. A woman and two men. He knew. But he chose to ignore, because the knowledge would be the preface to the truth. And that challenge would undoubtedly destroy him.

The first man was burley. Huge arms with bigger legs. Tied together by a moderate percentage of fat amounting to something of a bulging stomach. Yet, something was about him. As if he was a mountain, covered in a layer of dirt. Distracting from the indomitable, indestructible rock and iron laying just beneath. The man looked, as he always did, as if he reached unobtainable strength. Noctis’ brain pulsed. Anger, hatred, confusion all wrapped firmly in sorrow. Maybe it was the distance, or the scenario where he looked at the man. A segment of his brain lurched and broke forward. Not the part he was actively holding back, but an enlightenment all sons had to go through. The forward status that the man gave leached into simplicity. A truth came to Kenan. His father, Tyris, was nothing more than a man. Even though it seemed like a simple concept, it hurt unfathomably.

Tyris sat down at a table placed in the porch shade that adjoined the house. The woman quickly followed, and sat down a platter. Cooled water and a pie on top. So familiar. And even from a distance, he could smell it. A warm vibration climbed in Kenan, and then suddenly restricted to a cold tightness in his throat.

The woman took a seat to the left of Tyris. She had black hair tied back in a similar style to his own. Locks of hair flowed Beneath the restricted mane, they twisted and flowed as if they were made of water. Blue eyes contracted her hair in brightness, and her smooth skin followed in a very faint glow. She smiled. Kenan yelped in pain, not physical, but emotion. He willed and blinked tears away. His gut pitted and he felt like a large hole burrowed into his stomach. A cavity that will never be filled. And again, another truth was revealed. Simple but packed with a magnificent force. He wouldn’t feel Ava’s embrace. Never again.

The last man sat to Tyris’ right and across from Ava. Kenan nearly forgot his sorrow from the sudden introduction of bright confusion. A young man in dark gray leather with a thick sword on his hip. Black like his own, but that was where the similarity ceased. Dark blonde, almost brown short hair and clean shaven. It took a few moments to recognize him. He was young, unbroken. Ricard, Slayer of the O’wryn family, formerly under the name of Rufus. The only pain that came from his visage was regret. Of not being strong enough.

A silence ensued for a moment. Kenan prepared his mind to begin the functions of moving. Suddenly a loud roar sounded, so blaring that it even shook the ground. That took away any pretense of normal workings. Under the flood of emotional turmoil Noctis didn’t bother to react. Because he already knew.

In the sky, a large crack formed. Etching into the space above as if it was a broken window. The largest of the sky lacerations began to widen, and beyond the hole forming was pure black. Endless and ever consuming. Nonesthic. Another roar sounded out as a ginormous head of a serpentine dragon burst from the realm-fissure. Its long body chased, flowing above the house in a large circle. It took awhile before the impossibly percentile length of the beast to finally end. And as the last of the tail exited, the world and the ground beneath Kenan resonated. A large vibration that closely resembled the sound of deep seated hunger. Then the gap was forced closed and disappeared as if it was never there.

The no-legged flowed up and down, roaring occasionally. Abruptly it dipped and turned. Its head landed firmly on the path leading to the house. Mana pulsed from the quasi-dragon. momentum of the leading appendage stopped while it was obscured by a dark blue fog. The dragon's body continued being consumed by the hazed lapis murk. When the last of its body disappeared, mana that obscured contracted and firmed up into the shape of a human. Short emerald hair like a bob. Green eyes, dark skin, and white clothes with faint lines and shades of green.

She, Nuki the gifted, walked towards the house and soon seated on the last available seat. All four conversed. Yet, even with Kenan's greatly enhanced senses, the words were deaf to his ears.

Kenan’s brain long turned numb under the emotional war he was under. He didn’t comprehend, not because he couldn’t, but because he chose not to. But beyond the numbness, a deep, seething, hatred started to burst. Arms clenched to the point his talons drew blood, he started forward.

“I am sorry Mortem”

Noctis took a step and his mind was further sent into a haze of confusion and nausea. Before he even landed his foot on the ground the tread he was on changed and distorted. Balance was lost as everything spun in a sickening speed. Color twisted and contorted, objects lacked depth. A headache began to burn.

An audible snap and suddenly the world was righted. But it was different. Tall trees with prickly leaves he had never seen before. Snow was on the ground but the wooden obelisks still held their dark green color. Kenan turned, rage eroded the logical pathways in his head. But the fiery emotion was stopped because of the gaze of Ozzy.

The goliath didn’t have his sights on him, but beyond. His face was stoic, body language as rigid as ever. Nothing on the half-giants countenance let off his emotion. Kenan, he understood Ozzy to an extreme. The knowledge on why he did was lost to him. His bestial instinct? With his odd sense in the tiniest changes of body language and scent? No, it went deeper than that. In the goliath's eyes, beyond them. His soul was brought to bare and left naked.

“I won’t let you so goodbye. Not yet. You aren’t ready.”