With another day at the Promise Land coming to an end, David can only think of how different it is to watch the sunset from a rooftop. Crouching carefully on the rickety roof of his tiny shack, David frowns at the blazing oranges, sultry purples, and dying blues gracing the sky to the West. In the clouds, he sees only things that remind him of the worst of mankind's transgressions: war. Mushroom clouds, he thinks. They're all mushroom clouds. Bombs exploding in the near future. Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the past. The fiery reds painting the fog of a napalm baptism fourty-so years prior. It's all flashing before his eyes. The skeletons taking over the cloud shapes; skulls wrapped up in the nimbus.

It's been far too sunny for his liking. But the sun was necessary. With the rain and mud had come a dire wetness across the fields. No work had really gotten done with the people in the fields. Laundry hadn't dried on the lines. Life itself had paused in the storm. No babies were born. No progress was made. That David knew for sure. There were things he hadn't done. And yet, so much had been done in the dark of the storm clouds.

Fingering the letter in his left hand, David straightened his backpack, which had been slung over his shoulder and secured across his chest. Inside the sack was the entirety of his earthly possessions. Should one have entered what used to be his shack, they would find it utterly abandoned; cleaned out of any personality. Everything he owned was now slung across his back, secure as he crouched atop the roof. Looking down at the opened letter in his fingers, he nodded to himself.

"So what do you figure this is about?" David asked aloud, knowing there would be an answer.

"I think he's letting us in on his little secret," came Mystica's answer. The booming, deeper version of David's voice echoed among the nearby trees and danced across the fields before the shack.

"You think Eli has something to hide?" David pondered, allowing his free hand to tent across his lips in thought. It was a form of coping. A mechanism. Something to waltz across his lips; to let them know they have not gone forsaken.

"Every powerful man in history has had something to hide," Mystica elaborated with a chuckle. "Eli is no exception to the rule of the cycle."

"Rule of the cycle?"

"History repeats itself, Dave," Mystica snickered. "You should know that quite well."

"The fall of every great civilization," David said blankly. But behind the monotone of his voice, there was something fearful. He knew things were heading for change. Everything in time must change.

"Rome, Syria, the USSR..." Mystica listed with a sense of joy spreading through his heart. "Eli's bringing us to something new. Something dark. Something..."

He licked his teeth with an audible CLICK.

"Delicious."

To this, David shook his head. Mystica had always been a bit...unnerving, but as of late, the monster had grown more hungry. The Id had become something deeper, stronger, and more ravenous. With glory at his fingertips, Mystica had gained a new sense of purpose. With Madness and Warfare's events, Mystica had slowly begun to realize how very vital he was to the survival of not only the Congregation, but the Black Circle as well. He was a soldier in white pants, marching onward to death; up the hill to glory. Names are forgotten. Legends live forever.

"He's taking us right into the Myst itself," Mystica exclaimed in a harsh whisper, now letting the energy in his heart flow into his limbs as he shook to and fro in a mad mantra, moving back...and forth...

"If...that's where we're going," David sighed, looking back down to the envelope in his hands. "Then we have some things we need to do first."

"No, you have things to do," Mystica corrected with a grin. "You have such...matters of the heart. Poison. Toxins. Love."

"One and the same," David concluded, tucking the envelope into his boot. With both hands now free, he dug into the inner pockets of his jacket, removing two items. In his left hand, he nervously clutched a handwritten letter, enclosed in a handmade envelope and rubbed down with the scent of his favourite tea. In his right hand, a single satchet of Winter White Earl Gray tea. With trembling fingers, he placed the satchet to his nose and took in a deep whiff of the powerful aroma. Eyes closed, he sighed with a combination of pure satisfaction and passion.

"Memory?" asked Mystica, for once genuinely concerned for his lighter side.

"Memory," David affirmed.

Her eyes. Her eyes filled with tears in the night air. Late August evening, past midnight. The park. The name of the park forgotten. Remember. Remember the touch of her hand, the twitch of her tiny nose as she wept. His own eyes blocked by tears. Hand moving in rhythm -- writing? The bland smell of a hospital. Beep. Beep. Beep. Tick. Tock. A clock, a monitor. Something begging him, drawing him in like grasping, smothering hands. Off-white. Sterile. A desk in New York. Another letter. Anonymous? A woman's handwriting. Tears, tears, tears.

"Emily..."

When David finally opened his eyes, he found himself crouched on the rooftop next to the illusion of an embodied Mystica. The darker half offered a comforting pat on the shoulder. It was a quick squeeze of empathy, followed by Mystica rising to his feet and looking over his shoulder at David's huddled form. David could feel a single warm tear roll down his cheek and disappear off the side of the roof; disappearing into the tiny arms of the grass below, where it was drowned in the sea of the earth. Like one man out into a battlefield. One boy into war. One tear in an ocean. Lost in the forgotten rain.

"Do what you need to do," Mystica said, leaping off the roof and landing in a crouched position on the grass below, not far from where the tear disappeared. "I'll meet you at Eli's."

With Mystica's departure, David breathed deep. Looking back up at the horizon, he watched as the sun finally began to disappear beneath the hills in the distance. The sun, like one more tear. One massive, golden tear in the sky's massive ocean, finally going to rest. With darkness approaching, it would become a memory. One more memory in the dark. One more thing forgotten until it was reborn and rekindled. A fire that never died, but was ever lost. David rose to his feet and clutched the letter in his left hand, looking it over. His own handwriting on the front cover: "To whomever you are."

With a final breath, he leapt from the rooftop.

Achievements

• 1x Tag Team Champion
  
• August 2013 Superstar of the Month (Thank you all so much!)
  
• 1x US Champion
  
• 1x X-treme Champion