’Let us begin.’

  A curtain falls. Darkness. Rivin can’t hear anything. Can’t feel. Not for an eternity captured in a velvet blink, a moment lost in time, before the world rebuilds itself, first, through luminous song, a single falsetto tone trilling in the distance, building a wall of limestone through luminous echo.

  Oh, creator, the light is thinly seeping,

  Upon the dream you dreamed through Him—

  A hero not for keeping,

  And so you closed your eyes again.

  A dim-lit room grows into focus, thick with the scents of grime, blood and sweat. He spies a sea of boys, all well-built and dusted with ash and warpaint. They surround him. Him and another. There’s a throne too, one just beyond the crowd, propped up as high and mighty as the teen atop it; a ginger with striped cheeks, a bronze mace sat across his lap.

  They’re all screaming. All kicking up the dirt and waving their weapons; thirsty for blood, even while just moments ago… Rivin remembers faintly: That they were brothers.

  ‘How quickly, how mercilessly fast, it all changes. Lachesis' voice is in his head, soaked in his old friend's sound, an echo of what he remembers twisted into her bidding, but Rivin can only draw a sharp breath in response because he’s curled up on the floor. There’s blood in his mouth, pooling in his throat, choking out his words.

  “You ‘eard the Strongest!” One screams from the piles, his face a scrubbed-out blur. “Kill ‘im!”

  “Judd, please!” A desperate, familiar voice, one that pains him, pains him more than the broken ribs. More than the bruised and swollen face. “Please, stop this!” Rivin. The real Rivin. Just fifteen then—just fifteen and already strong. Already brave. He’s hurt too, standing tall despite it, his chin tilted towards their narrow-eyed leader. “You got what you wanted, didn’t you?”

  Judd looks over the broiling pit with an unreadable expression, his bolt-blue eyes scanning each aspect of the room, from the ravenous crowd to the flickering wall sconces, and then, finally, to the two at the centre, one curled in the dirt, the other standing tall. Yes, so tall but… Rivin can see it now as he saw it then—how it drags down lean shoulders. How it tunnels out muddy eyes. Defeat.

  “Quiet!” Judd calls, clear and true, and the room falls into an immediate silence. Satisfied, the lanky teen rests his chin on his knuckles, tilting his head from side to side, counting the seconds, before growing very still. He’s a stranger now, Rivin remembers, a pit gaping open in his gut. A stranger to us all.

  Judd seems almost bored when he speaks, drawing out the words. “Death,” he begins, smiling lazily, “or exile.” He waves his hand, and the room roars thunder, bodies flocking forward to holler and roughhouse before the leader commands the atmosphere once again with a sharp slap, zipping away the sound. His eyes are fixed on one; the one standing tall. “Your decision?”

  The Real Rivin’s lip curls, trembling, and he can see that little dimple in his chin, the one he only ever gets when he makes that face, the face where his eyes are all glossy and glowing, when the world, for a fleeting moment, is too much to bear. He’ll swallow it. Rivin knows through the tears. He’ll swallow it and smile.

  ‘Hey, Baby Grey?’ The voice chirps in his head, torn straight from the marrow of his past.

  Hm?’

  ‘Uhh. Never mind.’

  ‘No. Tell me.’

  The real Rivin turns to face him, the lump in his throat dissolving into that terrible, stupid, beautiful grin. His knuckles are all scraped and bloody, and the smoke looks, in that moment, billowing out behind him, like wings.

  Please don’t, Rivin thinks but doesn’t say. You deserve it more than I do…

  ‘It’s just…’

  ‘Spit it out.’

  He looks away, back at Judd, and seals his fate. “Judd, please—”

  “Death, Rivin,” the Warboy purrs. “Or exile.”

  It should have been me…

  ‘Is this…’

  Please, stop…

  “I will not kill my brother.”

  ‘…Goodbye?’

  “Tch.” Disappointment.

  Rivin looks away, up at the ceiling. He can’t watch. He hates this part.

  “You’re so weak.”

  He closes his eyes.

  The screaming begins.

  Yet we remember thee,

  Through bone and soul and teething,

  We dream the dream you dreamed.

  Though there’s much of it that’s missing.

  Tap. Tap. Tap.

  When he opens them again, he’s in a tin can, all curled up amongst soft scraps and salvage. He looks at the opening and spies a thin, dank curtain that has been ever so slightly pulled aside; a round brown eye blinking curiously back at him. It disappears shortly after, followed by:

  "Sorry if I woke you. I thought you might be hungry…”

  Rivin only groans, finding some difficulty in getting his much larger form out of the can. Before long, he manages to get to his knees, glaring at the sharp and dusty gravel scuffing up his palms. The light is dismal here, but he spots the figure easily, eyes trained to the bashfully smiling child waiting patiently by the bin.

  He climbs to his feet and shifts aside, frowning, as a tiny, gaunt boy follows suit behind him, cautiously peeking from the opening, revealing two wide grey eyes sunken deep into a sallow face. Rivin looks away, down at his palms again.

  “This isn’t the future, Witch,” he mutters.

  ‘Do you think we’ll always be together?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  “Stop this game.”

  ‘I hope so.’

  … Me too…’

  Rivin glances away from the two now sharing bread in the trash, turning to gaze over a desolate landscape of expansive mulberry void, torn through in places by shimmering scenes, each playing out as though underwater, others mere silhouettes rippling in the distance as unknowable blurs.

  He dusts off his pants, and steps towards it before pausing.

  We were children once—remember?

  Before blood, before choice.

  “My name’s Rivin. What's yours?”

  He doesn’t look back. Only listens. Only remembers the way he’d swallowed so thickly. How his hands had been shaking. How Rivin was warmer that anything he’d sat beside in months.

  “She called me…” A tiny voice followed by a brief hesitation. Rivin mouths along. “…Her Baby Grey Eyes,” and continues forward, towards the song.

  Before the word

  w e a k…

  The floor beneath him appears to be solid, the dim light fading quickly before blinking out completely.

  Took our names,

  Stole our voices.

  ‘I’m already forgetting…’ Ricket? That’s Ricket’s voice, although faint.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  He heads towards it, feeling through the darkness with his palms, the spectacles, once clear to him, now teasing shadows dancing in the periphery.

  ‘I can’t make sense of it. It’s mostly blood. Sometimes.’

  Something warbles ahead of him, oscillating, and he stops. Chilled. Breath caught between his teeth.

  ‘You were there. Your head was bleeding.’

  A crushing percussion.

  Rivin creeps closer, his hands growing clammy.

  ‘But, it wasn’t… yours.’

  His lungs are tight. Burning.

  ‘Sometimes it’s just colour—or light.”

  The ugly,

  The hurting.

  A resonant, sweeping sound trips him up as daylight comes alive.

  The threat of new scars.

  A blue skyline bursts before him for a fraction of a second— a splash of golden sunlight striking across a scalding hillside, a blazing fire through treetops—before it's gone. The darkness returns, and with it, his backside striking hard against the ground.

  If this world is worth saving…

  ‘Leaving.’ Whispered into his ear. ‘It’s called leaving.’

  Another churning spiral of sound. Another splash of hillside, closer now, a gorge in the peak still smoking.

  Is it worth who we are?

  Rivin covers his ears.

  ‘Everything that burns…’

  The void screeches a glimpse of blood-soaked drag paths, of curled and bloodied fingers thick with rings clawing at the turned over dirt.

  You chose once.

  We still recall.

  “Stop…” he pleads quietly. He can feel the ground sucking at his trousers, pulling him in. He tries to get to his feet again. He can’t.

  ‘Rises up…’

  A moon-shield burden, a thousand soul toll.

  A thunderclap strikes him backwards, his spine crushing against the ground as his senses are overtaken by flesh and blood and matter and shards of glass the size of towers glinting through flames now surging all around him, licking, lapping, popping at his skin.

  He pinches his eyes closed, screams— and…

  For a moment, the grip around him softens, rippling around his flesh, before it tightens in the quiet, lashes over his mouth, and drags him through.

  “Call for me…”

  You again, he thinks through the panic.

  “I’ll bounce back.”

  How can I call for you? He’s beginning to feel weightless. Cold. I didn’t get your name.

  So, he leans back.

  ‘The world is ugly, Baby…’

  I know, Mama.

  ‘So, you must never leave this room, okay?’

  He submits.

  ‘That's my good boy.

  That's my angel,

  My Baby Grey Eyes…’

  And then he falls,

  and he falls,

  and falls,

  and falls… through despair.

  And when He could not rise again…

  Through plains full with bones, bleached white from the sun.

  ‘Sweet boy. Soft boy.’

  You turned away.

  Through seas of the sick clawing for breath, pulling at his clothes, pleading at his passing figure.

  ‘Weak link. Weak spirit.’

  and it did not end.

  Through endless violent cycles regurgitated.

  Did you hear us falling, Maker?

  ‘What awaits you is unending, unflinching, unyielding…. Suffering.’

  Did you hear us hit the ground?

  He hits the bottom of everything.

  Every exile makes a kingdom.

  Suddenly, a kick to his gut, and he curls in on himself, gasping for breath; another to his skull has his head snapping back before another, and another, and another, and he's coughing up blood, reaching through crowds of sweating, screaming boys, reaching towards—himself. Himself being carried out the exit, blackened and bruised but still alive—reaching back.

  'Death. Or exile.’

  Every scream, a sound.

  Rivin screams, and the sound bounces before it rips the world apart, and he spills into movement, tripping over his feet to dodge a missile that demolishes a shopfront, the world around him suddenly rife with gunfire and smoke.

  Call for me, Maker

  ‘Call for me’.

  “Woohoo!” someone hollers from his side, excited. “The Space Race is on, baby!” before shouldering into him, “here! Your turn, Cap’n!”

  He's handed a blinking grenade in a yellow jacket, and he tosses a throw right into the bottommost layers of the depths, twirling over sideways through the rocky floor and up through the rubble of battling ghosts, his fingers taut around an enormous ebony sword that he splits clean across a black and red chestplate.

  He strikes again, against ten crushing soldiers, unseaming a line of gulping throats, before he’s shoved forward and into banners of white and gold that blind him, wrapping him up and tight until they’re wrenched away like curtains to reveal the sun. Blinding and golden.

  We’re homeward bound now…

  He shields his eyes as a cruel storm broils above, switching in an instant to shadow over a mass of mourners below, all gathered within an open coliseum around two rows of ornate coffins. They’re dressed in decadent gowns, faces covered by veils and masks, many holding torches raised to the sky, when they look up to gasp and point to the podium where he stands.

  A hand from his side, pale as starlight, settles gently over his knuckles, but when he turns, all he can see is light without shape, brighter than anything—and so he stumbles back and off the balcony, falling, falling, and crashing through the marble floor to spin down the red and hollow throat of The No Option Drop.

  Call for me—

  ‘Call for me…’

  I'm scared.

  ‘I'll bounce back.’

  He lands in the midst of a flood that carries him between peaks of fallen towers, narrowly dodging their sharp and unforgiving bite, then dropping all too quickly past a blur of warring Swill and Seraphs.

  Hear me, Maker—

  A rogue wave crashes through and swallows the lot, downing them to the depths besides him. He tries to scream again, but the sound is choked as he spirals through the abyss, silenced until he's spat ashore.

  ‘I’ll bounce back.’

  Hear us out.

  He sees his friends on the ridge. They're beat up. Older. Smiling. There's a splash besides him; he looks over. A shadow. It runs ahead; he can see her braid, even in the dark. He tries to follow, but it all explodes and everything is erased. White.

  ‘Aren't you tired, child?'

  He's falling again. Falling so fast he can't feel his body.

  ‘You were tired then… So ready… you would have offered up yourself in his place. So eager to be rid of this…’

  A punch to the gut and he's sailing across time.

  ‘...Ugly world.’

  Another and he's reeling into a cliff face that raptures beneath him.

  ‘It doesn't get better, Ghost.’

  He's strung atop a tower, dangling above a pale golden city hugged by the sea.

  ‘Not without more and more…'

  He drops.

  ‘Suffering.’

  His skin splits open.

  ‘It should have been you… You were right.’

  Call for me—

  ‘CALL FOR ME—’

  It hurts. Everything hurts.

  ‘He was wrong about you, wasn't he?’

  ‘GHOST—’

  Rivin can feel himself beginning to weep, his organs devoured from the inside out.

  ‘You're not strong enough… You should have stayed in that room. That closet.’

  ‘Stay inside, Baby. Don't make a sound. Promise me? P r o m i s e me.’

  He whips back his head, but he's breaking apart.

  ‘You never wanted this life, remember?’

  Stop—

  Call for me—

  ‘CALL FOR ME—’

  ‘Give it back. It's okay.’

  He's flung into the thickness of branches, scratching at his face, his lungs screaming for air as he claws his way through on instinct. He's running. Running. Running so fast, and he can smell smoke, see it building above the trees. He’s running towards it. He can’t stop.

  ‘Someone stronger will do it. Someone stronger than you.’

  “Rivin, stop fucking running. That's an order.” A voice he doesn’t recognize. Curt. Cold.

  He switches off his headpiece, and sprints faster, until he can't feel the pain, until he can’t feel anything.

  Call for me—

  ‘Call for me, Ghost…’

  Who are you?

  His lips are wide apart, already screaming, already forming a name he doesn't yet know.

  Who are you?!

  ‘I’ll bounce back…’

  He breaches the canopy, tripping down a steaming crater in the earth.

  ‘Do you think we’ll be together always?’

  'I hope so.'

  ‘You're not strong enough.’

  Rivin climbs to his knees. His hands are covered in blood when he lifts them, dirt congealed thick with it.

  ‘For the Fate that you've stolen…’

  Oh, Creator—

  He’s too frightened to look up, his heart hammering hard in his chest, in his ears.

  Look again.

  ‘Are you?’

  Not for strength…

  He's trembling as something rises beyond the hill, a behemoth shadow to eclipse all light.

  But for refusal.

  He hears the air pull around him, the cool wind gushing a shriek.

  Not for those who never break…

  He screams.

  But for those who downright refuse it.

  And the echo shatters the ceiling.

  In an instant, he's showered in opalescent fractals as the sky cracks a hole. Through it, a shadowy silhouette ascends; in two hands, they bear razor-thin long blades that sing their slice through the air, zipping open an enormous bulging forearm.

  If gods must choose what cannot rest—

  He cries out, relieved, and a second shadow falls through the hole in the sky to burst like a rocket into the monster’s back.

  Then wake, Creator…

  He calls again, a third spinning into orbit, driving a spiked bat into thigh.

  …Wake.

  Rivin screams until his throat is raw, a fourth descending onto the battlefield, spilling a barrage of bullets.

  And choose again.

  He laughs, and it bursts the creature right down the centre as the first shadow unseams its side, flipping to land gracefully on their feet, and then swiftly darting towards him, a sleek metal arm outstretched.

  “Hiya, Hero. Good thing ya called!”

  Call for me…

  Call for me…

  Rivin moves towards them without hesitation.

  ‘You don't even want to be here. Do you, Ghost?’

  Call—

  Their hand is cold, but he feels warm where it touches him.

  “Don't look back!” He’s pulled to his feet. “And don't let go!” and lurched forward, dashing back up the canyon, and in the glimpse before there’s a body beside him, he sees a pale hand twitching in the dirt, heavy with rings, reaching out, before the shadowy crew blocks his view.

  “We’ll hold it off!” One calls.

  Slink?

  Creator, wake…

  ‘Go back to the closet, Baby...’

  No. No, I won't. Never again. I'll go...

  “Where are we going?!” He gasps, looking ahead at a looming edge.

  “Where else?” The shadow laughs, skidding around the front of him, and he catches sight, fully and for the first time, of a face. A wicked grin. Thin glass frames. Freckles. Before they’re flung off the edge and into the blue, blue sky. “To the ending!”

  And choose again.

  On that note, thank you everyone for reading so far. This story, while a passion, is a challenge at the best of times, and I'm excited to be sharing it (pretty unpolished) with you. Thanks for giving me the space to make mistakes while still being creative. :)

  Life is crazy.

  Anyways, thanks again. You're awesome.

  TLDR; Thanks, you're the best! I'll be removing and editing this series upon completion for a relaunch. DW, it'll be up for a few weeks, and I'll link you to the revised edition for the sequel. I'll keep you posted. Vol II is gon' be hectic.