A tornado of fire ripped across the damned landscape, shredding noxious clouds from the sky, tearing up the ground and leaving behind rivers of molten rock. Wider than a city, taller than a mountain, the tornado grew as it destroyed, sucking millions of wild monsters into its raging furnace, reducing everything in its path to raw matter that fed the belly of constant, random change. Ever recycling, ever expanding, the Retrospective had no concept of time. All time was dead in this House.

    The demon once again knew awareness when it slipped from the base of the mighty fire tornado, riding a narrow river of magma on a skiff made from charred bone. Around it, ash swirled and danced in the blistering heat, thick as a snowstorm, borne on steam and smoke that sent it spiralling up to the festering sky. As the tornado receded into the distance, black rock began to mould the land anew, rising as jagged mountains, falling as ravines of obsidian glass. The stench of blood made a cloying atmosphere, and the shrieks of new monsters once again echoed across the smouldering plains.

    How many times had the demon been reborn into this world? A thousand? A thousand thousand? And always with the voice of the Retrospective in its mind, steering its direction, leading it to where the next anomaly hid, to where the seeds of life waited to be destroyed. But this time there was a difference. The remnants of the man in the silver light remained inside the demon, that clean and distant ringing, almost like a challenge, or a summons to some inexorable change which could not be denied. It mingled with the voice of the Retrospective, tearing at the demon's resolve and allegiance.

    The skiff came to a halt, lodged in black rock as the river of magma cooled and hardened. Confused, torn, the demon stepped from the vessel of bone. Gripping its mighty axe tightly, it resumed its never-ending journey across the Retrospective.

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