A constant, burning pain, as if flames were consuming his body, was the first thing ByuL felt when he was able to feel again. Before he had gone through the savage process of respawning, he had always expected it to be peaceful, quiet and somehow philosophical. As if it would be some happy voyage to explore his inner self. In reality, it was neither of those things. Despite shutting his eyes, a merciless specter haunted his vision—a white fire burned into his eyelids. The torment never left him even as he shook his head to flee from its gaze. While his physical body melted from the flames he was imprisoned in, the white's only purpose was to attack his mind. It gnawed at his spirit like tides of lava stripping a volcano layer by layer, stone by stone. Never enough to reduce the mountain to ashes, but just enough to strip its surface of history. With every wave, parts of his mental discipline caved in.

That wasn't the worst part, however. The feeling of loneliness—he was all by himself in a sea of fire—hurt him most of all. As a zerg, ByuL had never been so alone in all his life. He had always had companions around him, and for the first time in a very long time, his mind found nothing. His natural gifts had elevated him to become one of the most powerful zergs in their history, yet he was alone. Even his ruptured mind seemed to abandon him as he struggled to remember.

With each step, his mind sobered. Slowly, more and more of his memories started to come back to him in glimpses: The day the CJ spies found out about Life's defeat and the Scepter of Power being lost; his smile when the Zerg Council elected him leader; the pain and disappointment of betrayal, first by his clan and then by his friend herO. He had given everything for his family, had always done his duty and had sacrificed his own glory for the good of CJ. And what did he receive for his amble service? At best, humiliation; at worst, nothing. He was never chosen to be part of those grand expeditions to Oegugin for fame and fortune. Instead he stayed home to defend Entus Castle, forever its babysitter. Always left behind.

Then something—anything—changed, tearing ByuL out of his memories. His body still hurt, but the flames had abated. He felt bones cracking and joints moving into position, blood beginning to fill his veins. And it was cold all of a sudden. So very cold. The white had descended into his chest only to begin pulsating, changing colors as his heart resumed beating. A hot orange, an intense red, a deep blue—and then, a darkness. He didn't know how long the process had taken as the sense of time had long since fled from ByuL. For some, respawning took mere minutes. For some, hours. For others still, they were tortured for days and weeks before surfacing to the world of the living.

ByuL opened his eyes and saw the stars. His body resisted his commands, and he laid there on the floor for another few minutes, right where he had awoken. As he turned his sight away from the night sky, he began to realize that he was in the throne room of Glostalea, the proud capital of Metzennala, and he could only see the stars because the roof had collapsed. But it wasn't the throne room he had known, richly decorated and filled with the boisterous royal court. This room was empty and quiet. The ornate throne wasn't where it was supposed to be, either. It had shared ByuL's fate, lying sideways on the cold floor, proclaimed dead without ceremony. Behind it, golden adornments blistered in the heat. When he had gathered enough strength to push himself to his feet, he inhaled the air that had swirled up around him, thick and dark with a year's worth of dust. Hearing a crackling noise from beyond the blackened walls, he decided to circumvent the fallen pillars in the hall, searching for answers.

He still didn’t know what had happened here, but as he found an opening in the facade to take a look upon the city, he discovered the source of the strange sounds: the verdant capital of Glostalea was in ruins. From the top of Mount Mvp, where the summer palace had been built, he witnessed the firestorm that consumed the eastern part of the city. It was the ash from this dying world that covered the mountain and the palace in soot. Of Fruitdealer Market, only a crater was left. Of NesTea's Stronghold, once the center of the world, only rubble. With tears in his eyes, caused by the destruction and smog, ByuL scanned his surroundings for life. Nothing. He felt nothing. He expanded his search radius, but for kilometers no sign of life could be found. The capital was dead. ByuL had hoped that his loneliness would end after his time in purgatory, but no one answered. There was nothing left, and the longer ByuL thought about this, the more his anger darkened his heart.

Determined to find and punish the ones responsible for this tragedy, he searched for a way down the mountain. Before he could reach the main gate of the stronghold however, he was overwhelmed by more memories: Ruling with an iron fist as the most powerful being in the city; persecuting Terrans who had abused the power of technology; balancing the influence of each race in the capital. He busied himself with the minutiae of government when an unexpected foe proved himself a greater threat than any Terran: the Protoss exile Rain. He wasn't supposed to be on this continent, much less so close to the capital with his forces. Even if he had had the impudence to return uninvited, the Gatekeeper should have been able to stop him. Yet Rain defeated Curious and forced the gate open with ByuL unprepared. Rain had planned a perfect invasion. While ByuL was busy managing his forces, the Protoss general had snuck into the throne room. A tremendous psionic storm ravaged his army, and Rain cut ByuL down inside his command post, a psi blade through his heart.

Regaining his consciousness again, ByuL fell to his knees, staring at his hands. His tears slammed to the floor, watering the ashes before mixing with blood from dead hydralisks. Someday, he thought, they would respawn as free Zerg. In the red puddle he saw the face of the one he had vowed to find. It was him. He had failed. He returned to Glostalea after he had lost to Rain, but he could not raise the city to its former glory. The exile had sacked the city and had left little for it to recover, and ByuL tried in vain to revive its withered veins. He hit the floor with his fists, splattering mud on his face. Despite feelings of helplessness, he got up again, and continued his descent. He looked back to realize that even the hallowed mountain had not been spared—a ragged cowl more than a brilliant crown.

On his way to the base of the mountain, ByuL stumbled over the wreck of a vehicle; it was nothing a Protoss would have used in battle. As he wiped his eyes clean, he had a closer look: the shell of a mine? Another string of memories hit ByuL like lightning: Wandering through the burning districts; trying to put out fires and remove debris; burning with the guilt of his mistakes. Then, INnoVation came. At first ByuL thought he was a friend who would help him save the capital from even more damage, but he was wrong once more. The Terran had come to punish him for his sins against mech. Still broken from his first defeat, ByuL did his best to resist. His orchestra of destruction raided supply lines, cut off passes and struck weak positions, but it wasn't enough. ByuL was crushed under the weight of his own ultralisk even after retreating amidst his shame. Even still, ByuL had stumbled back to the throne room before passing out. INnoVation left him there to die, caring nothing for the annihilation of the Zerg cultural center, their civilization's heart. He was determined to claim the scepter.

Leaning against the side of the crashed tank, ByuL again resumed control of his conscious self. His eyes were boiled as he tried to see through the mist: there was only death here, and everything reminded him of his failure to do his duty. Every Zerg carcass, every shattered building, every charred meter of earth. The sadness of losing the city he once loved, with its magnificent castles, its racial districts and many wonders, evolved into something different. His love turned into disgust, his sadness into a twisted satisfaction. What good had it ever done him to carry out his duties? Everyone spat on him when they had the chance. Everything he had fought for was now crushed—his city, his bonds to his family, his power. Hate filled ByuL’s heart, anger and frustration from his recent defeats flowed through his body, overwhelming his spirit. He would take no more.

Fragments of memories hit him again, but this time ByuL did not succumb to their power and stayed awake, too furious to drift wholly into the past: He saw the first zergling he had ever tamed, back when he was young. It was his closest companion for long periods of his life and they shared a lot of happy moments… and he remembered how hard it had hit him when it was killed by sOs. How hot his tears had burnt while mourning his loss. He saw his old clan fall apart, despite his best efforts to save them and hold them together in those dire times. How helpless he had felt. And how the void in his heart had threatened to consume him. Everything he had done for others always led to more pain for himself…

Enraged, ByuL got up and looked up at the sky, which was hidden behind a curtain of black clouds and smoke. For him, it didn’t matter. He saw the world through a red fog. His fist hit the wreck behind him, splitting it apart. ByuL didn’t care about the cuts on his fingers. Pain no longer scared him. Now it nourished him. He put all of his emotions, all of his successes and failures, his entire past life into one terrible scream. For hundreds of kilometers the noise was heard. However it wasn’t just a wave of sound ByuL had sent out into the world: his mind followed, bound to connect itself to every zerg creature on the way. His emotions became theirs. Raging howls soon came back over woods and fields, pushing through the dome of smog around the self-consuming ruins. A terrifying half-smile, showing his bared teeth, revealed itself on ByuL’s cracked lips. His eyes glowed like rubies. The crackling of hellfire began to fade in his ears, as a thunderstorm seemed to descend on Glostalea. Thousands of claws and wings drew closer. ByuL had called upon them to come, and so they did.

Waiting in the chaos amongst the smoking remnants of what once had been his home felt pure. Just. His days as a mere servant were over. He was indebted to no one and his loyalty would only be with himself. He would raze every city in the country and kill every living being standing between him and the king's scepter. Crossing off his personal grudges was merely a bonus. As the sun lit the world ablaze, as if it would share the capital’s fate, the horizon was filled by his army. Seated on a viper, still covered in a hardened crust of mud, blood and ashes, he leapt above the oily clouds and turned towards the West.

He recalled what the Scepter looked like and pushed the picture into the minds of his followers with all the rage he had behind it.

He attached only a simple command: BRING IT TO ME. NO MATTER THE COST.