Sarah watched in horror as Ethan awkwardly tackled Stern, sending them both sprawling across the floor, the Lucifractor gave out a last blast of light before fading to darkness. The blast chilled her to her very core, leaving her weak and aching, but she was still very much alive. Benny, Sarah, and Jesse all observed in surprise as the small orb shattered into millions of pieces, taking the threat of their species with it. Stern appeared to vaporize into thin air along with the Lucifractor, hopefully for good. They sat in silence for a few moments, letting the shock of what just happen settle in. The one thing Sarah was sure of was: Ethan had just saved her life.

"Well, that was interesting." Jesse's sarcastic tone broke the silence. His tone was calm and relaxed, but his shoulders were tensed and his eyes still flickered with remnants of fear. Sarah bit back a rude remark, trying to remind herself that he had helped them. Even if he was a no good, back-stabbing jerk with no regard for human life. And the reason she was a vampire in the first place. She would never forgive him for that.

"Did Ethan just..." Benny trailed off, obviously the most scarred out of all of them. At the mention of Ethan her gaze shot towards the space where he had tackled Stern. It hadn't exactly been graceful, knowing Ethan wasn't the most athletic-if not the least-out of all of them. But he had saved them none the less. When her eyes finally rested on Ethan, a wave of anxiety plunged into her, and within seconds she was speeding over to Ethan's side.

He wasn't moving.

Panicking, she shakily placed two fingers on his neck and felt for a pulse. She tried hard to ignore the roaring hunger for his blood as she waited for the steady thump of his beating heart. Benny watched with confusion and concern, not quite aware of the current situation. Jesse on the other hand, observed with subtle interest, already knowing what Sarah would discover. Her breath hitched as she continued to wait for a heartbeat. And wait. And wait...

But it ever came.

"Sarah, what is it?" Benny's voice wavered a bit as he spoke, worry for his best friend's well-being evident in his tone. Sarah couldn't bring herself to speak the words that repeated themselves in her mind over and over. Words that she never wanted to say, nor admit to herself or Benny. Turns out she didn't have to.

"He's dead. How unfortunate." Jesse spoke with partially hidden sadistic glee, and anger bubbled in Sarah's stomach. Before she could scream at him, he was up on his feet and at the door. "Don't call me again. I won't answer." he didn't even so much as wave before he disappeared through the doorway and back to wherever it is he came from. Sarah secretly hoped that he had gotten staked as soon as he walked out the door, but the odds of that happening were unfortunately quite slim.

Sarah was so caught up in her thoughts that she hadn't notice Benny make his way over to his friends body. It was only when she heard his sharp gasp and slight whimper that she was pulled back to reality, only to be met with Benny's crushed expression. She wasn't exactly sure how long they had known each other, but based on how they spoke-how they had spoken-she could guess they had known each other for a good couple of years. They sat there for what felt like years, staring at Ethan's lifeless form, waiting for some sign of life. Movement beneath his eyelids, the rise and fall of his chest, something.

Finally, Benny moved. He stood up and began searching around the room for something, Sarah watching in silent confusion and empathy. However crushed she felt about this, Benny felt ten times worse. He continued to pace around the room before finally locating the object he'd been looking for: an old, worn, leather spell book. Scooping the book off the floor, he began frantically flipping through pages, muttering the same word under his breath over and over, his green eyes shiny and wet with the threat of oncoming tears.

"Benny... what are you doing?" Sarah's voice was filled with nothing but sorrow and concern, and somehow this seemed to upset Benny even more. His hands shakily tore through the brittle paper, and she realized that he had been whispering the word "no" to himself over and over, obviously not finding what he was looking for. "Benny..." she called a little louder, her own eyes were beginning to water.

"What?!" he snapped rather harshly, but his voice cracked as he spoke. She flinched, and his eyes widened slightly as he realized how he'd been acting. Taking a deep breath, he glanced up from the pages of the book and looked straight at Sarah. "I'm not letting him just die like this."

"Benny, there's nothing you can do."

"I can do a spell!" his voice cracked once more as he continued to scour the Latin-filled pages with broken eyes.

"You can't bring someone back to life, remember last time-"

"There has to be something!" Benny was nearly screaming at this point, a faint echo resounded in the room, magnifying his shattered tone. Sarah watched helplessly, silently praying that this was all just a bad dream and she'd wake up any second in her bed. But she wasn't sleeping, this was real. She had lived, but her friend had died, and she couldn't help but feel like it was all her fault.

"I found something!" Benny burst out, filled with hope. Sarah's head snapped up and stared at him incredulously, thinking that he was mistaken. He turned the book around with his hands still shaking slightly, exposing the page he had found, the words Dare Vitae was scrawled across the top in large, spidery handwriting. A long string of Latin rested underneath, which she assumed to be a spell. Her eyes met his, filled with doubt, and his gaze saddened slightly upon seeing her disbelief.

"What does it mean?" she asked softly.

"Dare Vitae? It means "to give life". This could save him!" a familiarly optimistic smile broke out on his lips, but this did nothing to comfort her.

"Benny, it won't bring back his soul. Remember-"

"It does," he pointed to a small note scribbled to the side of the incantation, written in the same spidery Latin. "See? It says "mind, body, and soul". It brings him back, all of him back."

Sarah glanced towards Ethan's lifeless body, a pang of sorrow sweeping through her body at the sight of his pale skin. She didn't need to touch it to know that it was freezing cold. Then she looked at Benny. His green eyes were swelling with countless emotions, hope mixed with defeat, anger mixed with fear, and above all, the heart-wrenching pain of losing his best friend.

"We have to try Sarah," his stare was pleading, begging her to say yes. She knew it was wrong, they had learned a long time ago that it was dangerous to mess with life and death, but this was different. It wasn't some random girl's dog, it was a person. And not just any person, Ethan. He may have been awkward and geeky, but he had helped her and so many other people, with no real reason to do so. Sure sometimes he was the cause of the problem, but that didn't really matter. Going over all of this in her mind, all of her memories and recollections, she couldn't let those be his last years. She took a deep breath, taking in oxygen and collecting her thoughts. We have to try...

"Okay Benny." she feigned a smile, causing Benny's own to widen. It took a lot of preparation, mostly Benny making sure that he knew exactly how to pronounce every syllable of the Latin. Over the past year he had learned quite a bit, but he was by no means fluent. The amount of times he'd messed up a spell just because he said it wrong was overwhelming, and worry began to gnaw at Sarah's already queasy stomach. They may only have one shot at this. She took another deep breath.

"I think I'm ready." Benny finally looked up from the book, enthusiasm and hope swelled in his dark green eyes as he spread out the book in front of him, exposing the spell. Sarah kept trying to tell herself that it would be okay, that Ethan would come back and everything would return to normal, but she couldn't escape the swarms of doubt that had settled over her mind. It didn't help that Benny seemed to be hiding something, holding back some sort of information. She just hoped it wasn't important, and he was just refraining from making some dumb comment.

"Let's do this." at Sarah's firm announcement, Benny began to slowly chant the Latin written on the pages before him. Spending time on every word and slowly drawing it out in his efforts for perfection. After a few times of repeating the spell, he began to speed up, slowing increasing in speed and volume until he was practically yelling. The entire time her eyes remained glued on Ethan, who's condition had yet to change.

Then it happened. It wasn't dramatic by any means, but to her it was the most amazing thing in the world. A small laugh of relief escaped her lips as she observed the movement of Ethan's chest, slowly taking in oxygen. It was slow and a bit labored, but he was breathing. They had done it. He was going to be okay.

Everything was going to be okay.

Ethan didn't really think about it, he just knew that he couldn't let Sarah die. Not like this. His mind was scrambled and still spinning from the shock of entering Stern's mind, but he managed to push himself forward and knock Stern over. The world seemed to travel in slow motion, his feet clumsily pushed off the ground and towards the tall man before him, power radiating from the small orb situated beneath his wrinkled hands. Pushing all of his weight against him, the two were sent tumbling to the hard ground below, seconds seemed to last for hours. Right before they hit the ground, the two made eye contact. Ethan's eyes scared but full of determination, and Stern's pure, hot rage. He had been counting on fear to hold them back, an easy mistake.

Then he vanished. Disappeared. There one second and gone the next, completely vaporizing into thin air. A wave of pain and fire engulfed Ethan milliseconds before he crashed into the cold, hard floor. And then: silence.

He felt numb, emotionless, and completely at peace. At first he concluded that he was blind, only to realize that he was just entirely surrounded by darkness, somehow floating in a vast, empty space. Despite this, he had never felt more relaxed in his life. Then, images began to open in his mind, a film reel of memories dating from the day he was born to - as he now understood it to be - the day he died. Each picture lasted for less than a tenth of millisecond, but it didn't matter. Nothing seemed to matter.

Thoughts pummeled his brain, worries, fears, frustrations. Among the bad there was also so much happiness, recollections of joy and surprise, as well as excitement. Every memory a reminder of who he was and what he had done. What he would never do again.

But something changed.

All of a sudden he was surrounded by red flames, engulfing every fiber of his being and wreaking unimaginable pain and agony. Each vein in his body felt as if it were being pulled and twisted, every bone breaking and mending itself over and over. A cold feeling of hopelessness and darkness settled over his brain, as all of his emotions began to return to him. Each one inducing another fit of excruciating torture. A hurricane of fear, anger, and depression began to swirl in the pit of his subconscious, morphing and warping into emotions so terrible he'd never even thought them possible. He opened his mouth to shout out, call for help, but it was soundless.

That was the worst part. Among all of the chaos, all of the torment, it was completely and utterly silent. Not one sound echoed in the void, just horrifying silence. It was at that moment that Ethan realized he hadn't been breathing, there had not been any need to. But now he found him self hungrily gulping up tainted air, the smell of smoke and fire burned his nostrils. Slowly, the flames began to wrap around him, each tendril of red like a long and fiery tentacle. The fire charred his eyes and vaporized his insides, contorting and forming as it seeped through his skin and into his very core. The pain he had previously been experiencing was a mere fly on the wall in comparison to the monstrous bought of misery and torment that flowed through him in that moment. Tears leaked down his cheeks, red and acidic like the roaring crimson inferno that had enveloped him.

How long he remained like that, agonizing and plagued with the painful burden of the fire, he wasn't sure. It may have been mere seconds, or hundreds of years, but for that period of time, all he knew was the fire. There was only the flames. Red, demonic, raging flames.

And then, the most beautiful and miraculous thing happened. He opened his eyes.

Light flooded his irises and he welcomed them with overwhelming relief. Pain still flowed through his body, but it was so much less than what he had experienced during the fire that he barely even noticed it at first. As his eyes began to focus and the fog of unconsciousness receded, his surroundings began to take shape. At the moment he was staring up at a plain white ceiling, some of the paint had started to chip away and reveal the plaster underneath. The warm, bright sunlight was coming through a large white window to his right, surrounded in a white frame and - from his current position - a with view of blue, cloudless sky.

But the gentle glow soon became almost too bright, and his eyes hurt from just looking at it, causing him to immediately shut them again and letting himself once again to be flooded in darkness. Groaning, he turned on his side and allowed his back to face the sun. A sharp pain shot up his spine and he held back a whimper, desperately trying to remember where he was and how he'd got there. Memories and recollections of the experience with Stern flooded into his mind and images clouded his vision, but one realization sent a swarm of fear around his heart. He had died. He remembered dying, floating in nothingness, surrounded by peace and tranquility. And he could remember the fire, hot and freezing at the same time, the color of blood, swallowing him whole and ripping his body apart. Yet here he was, lying in what he now recognized to be Benny's guest bedroom, completely alive.

Swallowing his trepidation, he agonizingly pulled himself to his feet and settled on the soft carpet below. Despite the fading burn of the fire and the fact that he had just died and come back to life, he felt surprisingly energized. It was almost disturbing.

Then, as if someone had flipped a switch in his brain, everything snapped into focus. In milliseconds he was suddenly being attacked by all sorts of sights and sounds, and he staggered slightly as his skull pounded from his senses being overwhelmed. It felt as if every single one of his senses had been turned up to 100, magnifying the world around him in overpowering detail. His eyes caught every single crack and chip in the walls, the painted colors now more vibrant than ever before. Every creaking pipe and structural strain of the house echoed in his ears, and the light suddenly became even more bright than before, if that was possible.

Silently, he padded towards the door and cracked it open, wincing at the booming squeak of it's rusted hinges. The hallway was noticeably darker, and his tension lessened slightly. He could hear someone moving around downstairs in the kitchen, their sharp breaths and beating heart vibrated in his ears and he could only assume it was Benny, as the movements were much too sharp to be his grandmother's. His head continued to throb intensely and he had to keep reminding himself to keep quiet, that it was nothing compared to what he had experienced in his dream. That thought sent a series of chills down his spine. Had that been real? Or was that just some deranged fantasy of his subconscious mind? It had seemed so real, and he could still feel the fire in his veins, turning his blood to crimson lava.

His own sporadic heartbeat resounded in his spinning mind, and he quickly made his way down the shadowed hallway and ducked into what he knew to be the upstairs bathroom. What he saw in the mirror increased his anxiety in tenfold.

Long, black tendrils snaked their way down his pale arms and stained his skin like supernatural tattoos. Ethan was pretty sure he had not gotten tattoos, nor had he ever planned to. In fact he was positive if his mother saw this then he would fall victim to a series of screams louder than a siren. What disturbed him the most was the shape of the marks, which reminded him of the curling flames of a fire, wrapping themselves around his arms and leaving scorching black in their paths. A deep chill rapped down his already shaking spine, and his grip on the counter increased as he leaned on it heavily for support. The room seemed to spin and warp as he absorbed exactly what he was looking at. Visions of demonic red flames projected themselves in the back of his mind, identical to the black tentacles that now covered his arms.

There were other differences, subtle and less noticeable. He was paler, which only magnified the dark, smoky designs printed on his skin. Ethan stood there for what felt like hours, studying himself in the mirror. His eyes glued on his reflection as he attempted to comprehend what he was seeing. Wave after wave of panic bounced around in his stomach as his eyes focused on the expression of his doppelganger. The figure looking back at him was grinning wildly, almost insanely, to the point where Ethan felt almost sick.

"Ethan?" a familiar voice sounded from the doorway, and his eyes flickered away from his smirking twin and towards the brunette teenage boy standing just a few feet away. It was Benny, decked out in a green striped shirt and loose jeans. His face was a mixture of joy and shock, and a faint smile worked its way onto Ethan's lips. For some reason it felt as if he hadn't seen his best friend in years, the timeless moments spent in the inferno of red still remained in the back of his mind, but now his attention was elsewhere.

A grin cracked Benny's awed expression as he realized his friend had finally woken. Ethan wondered how long he had been asleep like that, and what exactly Benny had done to bring him back. Because he was dead. He knew it. Just like he knew he had two eyes and a nose. It was just a fact. But somehow, some way, he was back. The real question was, at what cost?

It was during this period of puzzlement that Benny noticed the marks.