SUCCESSOR: Following a Flame (DISCONTINUED)

Draft (Discontinued)

Smoke and ash billowed into the dark, starless sky. A large forest below was covered in flames, as well as the shadows that crawled among them. Spirits danced and laughed at it all, as if war was a joke.

It wasn’t.

A real battle was raging on in those depths: Living shadows brutally pushing forward to diminish the light of the defiant fire; Warriors on both sides of the battle giving their best to destroy the other. These two forces were giving their all.
On the side of shadows, a dark purple mass of void led the way into the center of the forest. It wielded two large swords in its mysterious arms to chop a path through the trees. Its name was Dymara, and it was what almost every human feared, but sought to destroy. 

On the side of flames, five warriors led their army to counter the shadows. Each warrior had their own item of fire, which allowed them to have control over the element in various ways. They were supposed to be more than enough to defeat the forces of Dymara. It turned out not to be so easy.
 
A boy by the name of Draven Wiltner stumbled and collapsed onto the hard, ashy ground of the forest. His messy black hair was singed, and his intense green eyes were watering from the smoke. Warriors of Shadow began to swarm around him, and the closer they got to Draven, the dimmer his vision of them became. Next to him, just barely in his field of vision, a torn red ribbon lay covered in ash, its golden glow slowly receding into the sky. Draven reached out for it with the last bit of strength he had, but just as his hand was in reach, the shadows swept it up from the ground and crushed it into nothingness. 

He slowly returned his hand to his side, his tears and burning arm now the only things he could feel. Spirits laughed, shadows grew, and flames dimmed as he was picked up and dragged by his enemies to their place of darkness. Draven had fallen, and now the world had fallen along with him. There was nothing he could do now to stop the shadows; no way out of the darkness. All Draven could do was think. 

All he could do was think of how he was somehow the one who had ruined everything.

"Good and Evil..."
 
"Light and Dark..."
 
"Fire and Shadow..."
 
"Order and Chaos...? Is Chaos really so bad, young successor?"
 
A wave of pain washed over Draven, as if somebody had stabbed him in the chest, and he quickly rolled off of his bed and onto the cold floor of his small bedroom. He could barely breathe, and around him his surroundings flashed in and out of his dream of the chaotic forest. One second he would be in his room, and another he was being dragged across the forest floor.
 
Darkness rimmed his vision as if he was looking through large binoculars, and he turned to look at his bed just in time to see an inky, shadowy figure (or possibly even a shadow itself) jump out of the room's wide open window.
 
Draven grabbed his numb right arm and desperately tried to yell out for help. The dark rim of his vision started to expand, and slowly he began to lose his grip on the memories of his dream. Draven's memories were forcefully being taken and/or changed, and he didn't even know why or how. What he did know is that if it didn't stop soon, he was most likely going to die.
 
Suddenly, he heard a clatter, and a hand touched his arm. Draven's dark-rimmed vision left him instantly, and he coughed and sucked in air. He dropped his arm to his side, and realized he was back to just being in his boring green room (though "boring" wasn't exactly the word he thought of at the time).
 
Next to Draven, his little sister was crouching down, tightly gripping his arm. Her short brown hair was abnormally loose, and she looked like she was still half asleep. Rubbing one of her eyes, she looked over to Draven's face, her expression did not change, but Draven knew she was worried.
 
"I don't know if you know this, but it's one in the morning right now. It would be super great if I could get some sleep without you almost dying."
 
"Align, this is serious," Draven coughed. "I had a crazy dream, and-- and then I woke up and I kept seeing the dream in my room. I felt like I wasn't even really here, and I think a dude tried to kill me! I could barely breathe, Align! You don't joke about that." He slowly sat up from the floor and looked around the room warily, noticing that the window was tightly closed.
Align gave Draven a disturbed look. "Okay. Well, if you feel better now, I'm going to go back to my room and try to get some sleep. Next time you start to die, don't be so loud, stupid." She let go of Draven's arm and shuffled back out the bedroom door and down the long hallway to her room.
 
"Wow, thanks for the tip," Draven said sarcastically after her, but she didn't seem to hear.