Millions of miles away, a young man with orange eyes and red hair stood gazing out of a window in the Nyon temple.

  Ion was hardly paying attention to Mantra and the other two as they guided him through a tour of the structure. He was preoccupied with a silent struggle that was taking place within him.

  A struggle he had been facing for two years now.

  A struggle with his own memories … memories he wished he never had in the first place.

  But of all the gruesome memories from his earlier dark life, it was that one memory that hadn’t spared him … hadn’t let him go.

  The memory that came at the very end of it all.

  For two years now, it hadn’t let him go … and it never would for the rest of his life.

  Two years ago