John opened his eyes, staring upward at a white ceiling. He reached to the side for his wife, but found only messy blankets. Where was Angela? John rolled to the side, standing. She was usually the first one up anyways. A wordless cry echoed across the manor house, and John stared at the doorway, only now smelling smoke, and noticing a slight orange glow coming from the bedroom doorway. He raced through the door, grabbing a shortsword hanging on the wall nearby. He called out for Angela.

"Angela! Where are you?"

Something was wrong. The walls were on fire, but he felt no heat from them. Despite Angela's frantic cries, he felt no urgency. John lowered his sword.

A dream... he realized, descending the stairs into the two-story foyer. It was his home, once upon a time. Twin staircases in light grained Salvaran wood led up to small balconies, and in front of those stairs stood the bandits. The same eight men he had seen countless times in the years following the massacre at his homestead stood, two with knives pressed against his wife and daughter. John stared blankly. He had become numb to it. He hated that reliving this memory had desensitized him to this tragedy. He called out to the swirling, billowing fire.

"I am dead to this, you monster! You cannot visit any horror upon me that I've not already done to myself!" There was a certain acceptance within his statement. He refused to acknowledge that he was trying to convince himself just as much as his surroundings.

The smoke bloomed, opening a maw backlit by the flames behind it. Its voice like the sound of rolling stones called out.

"LIAR!" A cackling laugh followed. "You are in MY field now, Cromwell, and I know everything about you. You cannot deceive me!"

The vision shifted. Instead of Angela, there now was Jamie. Her face was battered and bloody, and the knife that the bandit held against her chest drew blood from the tip. John raced up the stairs, but was rebuffed by a wall of coalescing smoke. It threw him back to the foot of the stairs, and he stood, feeling weak.

"Not Jamie...." he mumbled, staggering. "Please."

A gasp from the spirit rose. "Yes, boy. Beg me to spare your dream of a woman! Your fear, so intense! A dream, sufficient to give me real, physical form! Fear this inevitability, John, I drink your despair like wine and I will destroy all you love because you are too WEAK to stand against me! Fear me, FEAR for your Jamie, because like your wife, you cannot save her!"

John stared at the dreamlike depiction of Jamie, her eyes were so afraid, and there was nothing he could do. He sank to his knees. His wife, and now this. He could protect no one. For all his strength, all his power, all of the people he shielded died, and he was never good enough to stop it. He stared at the ground. Despair, fear, desire, hopelessness, all mingled, fogging his mind.

Outside the dream, the spirit grew stronger, and the fog became more dense. Jamie called out to John repeatedly, but he did not awaken. She saw a black tendril of fog, darker than the mist surrounding it, leading from John and into the air. What could she do? She tried to make her way down the building. Cursed shinobi, I've got to get to John, she thought frantically as she found a ladder.

A claw coalesced in the courtyard, ten feet across, and scraped the cobbles, digging up the earth and scattering it in a wide arc. Stones the size of fists flew into nearby buildings, and screams erupted from within.

"THEY FEAR ME AGAIN!" the spirit roared. "And I will have my form again!" Another claw sprang into existence, and swiped at two guardsmen who were brave enough to remain.