Kai's feet pounded violently on the rocky mountain pass as he hurtled headlong down the trail, sweat pouring from his brow and his lungs burning. Suddenly, from seemingly nowhere, a gargantuan golden dragon shot up into the sky and let out an ear-splitting roar. Kai was unsure why, but a sudden wave of relief flooded over him and he stopped running. It was then that he realised that he was accompanied by six others. He recognised two of them as the village priestess and one of the guards, but who the others were he did not know. As he turned around, he realised why he had been running, behind him stood a legion of armed troops who had stopped dead in their tracks and were staring in awe at the dragon. A man cloaked in a regal mantle barged his way through the soldiers and shouted something at Kai and his companions. Kai's head began to swim, and he couldn't make out what the man had said, but he could tell it was a threat. His companions shouted back, and an argument broke out between the two sides. Kai was still unable to process anything properly, but he could have sworn that the dragon had said something. Kai's head suddenly throbbed violently, blurring his vision, and a bright light suddenly flashed before his eyes. Once his head cleared, the dragon's corpse was lying on the mountainside, blood trickling from its skull. The man spoke up once more, and this time, Kai understood his words:
"Kill them."
Kai suddenly shot up, his heart hammering away in his chest as if it were trying to escape his body. As he looked around, he saw that he was only in his room, and his heart began to return to its normal pace. Kai's dreams had always been either fairly mundane or nonsensical in the past; never had he experienced a dream so vividly terrifying. Still shaken by the dream, Kai climbed out of bed and got dressed with trembling hands.
It was slightly chilly outside; Summer was on its way out and Autumn was creeping slowly in. The fact that it was cold was probably a good thing, as it would help to wake Kai up. It was fairly early in the morning, and the rest of the Silverwood family were still asleep. Kai would have liked very much to go back to sleep, but that was not a possibility. Instead, he had left the house to go into the fields for some fresh air to clear his mind. As he stepped into a cornfield the air a few metres away from him began to shimmer, and appeared to be tearing apart, creating some sort of rip in space. Kai suddenly realised that it was one of the rifts of which he had heard travellers talking about. Wanting to be prepared for whatever horrors the rift would realease, Kai grabbed a scythe which was resting on the barn wall and adopted a fighting stance. To Kai's bewilderment, what appeared from the rift was no sort of abomination. Instead, a young man tumbled out of the rift and fell into a gap between the rows of corn. At least he hadn't damaged any of the crops. As Kai approached the unconscious figure he noticed that the young man was stark naked, but a shield had fallen from the rift with him in a position that conveniently covered his nether regions. The young man's face looked familiar, but Kai couldn't remember having seen him before. Unsure of what to do, Kai simply fetched some clothes and laid them down next to the unconscious man. He was too scared to wake him, for all he knew, this man could crave human flesh. After all, he had just fallen out of a rift, and flesh-eating monsters usually appeared from rifts. Instead, he returned the scythe to its original position and briskly left the field.
As Kai paced down Ley's empty streets confusion swam through his head. What could have done? What should he have done? It's not every day that a naked man with a shield pops up in your cornfield out of seemingly nowhere. Should he alert the guards? Maybe if he just left him, he would put on the clothes and go off on his merry way and everything would be fine. Kai continued to pace along the street, and continued to think. You could tell that he was flustered, because thinking wasn't something that Kai did very often.