Chapter 1
The beginning of everything
One beat.
Two.
Three.
...
"Why is my heart so loud?"
A lone figure sits beneath unfinished concrete pillars on the rooftop of a skyscraper which was like a promise waiting for someone to name it, his silhouette stitched to the city's ragged horizon.
Wind threads through the rebar like a restless thought.
Below, red-and-blue lights sweep across the streets. Searchlights skimming rooftops one after another, while distant sirens dissolve beneath the rising wind that tastes of dust and possibility.
They were getting closer!
"This is probably the worst hiding spot I've ever picked."
Pause.
"...No."
"Second worst."
"The first one exploded." adjusts the wrapped object. He looks toward the edge.
"I could jump."
...
"No. Bad idea."
"If they see me..."
"I'm dead."
"If they don't..."
"I'm still probably dead."
"Wonderful."
Clack.
...
Clack.
...
Clack.
"The profane cannot escape the Father's gaze."
"He still carries it."
Another voice:
" Scour every stone!"
"Leave not one shadow untouched!"
BDUMP! Heart beats.
"shit, I can't move, moving means being seen." Holds the object tighter and slowly crouches lower. Doesn't breathe. Doesn't move.
"Three exits, none useful."
"West?"
"Too exposed."
"South?"
"Six stories."
"East?... I'd rather meet the people after me."
The voices grew closer.
He lowered himself further against the concrete pillar, pulling the wrapped object beneath his coat.
Footsteps echoed through the unfinished floors below.
Slow.
Measured.
Clack.
A pause.
Clack.
Another pause.
He held his breath.
Don't look up. Don't look up.
The footsteps stopped.
Silence.
"Search the eastern structure."
A second voice answered from somewhere below.
"Already searched."
"Then search it again."
His jaw tightened.
Persistent bastards.
He slowly shifts his weight, peering through a narrow gap between two concrete pillars.
Three figures emerged from the darkness below.
He couldn't make out their faces. Their silhouettes were distorted by the sweeping searchlights outside, their bodies wrapped in long, unfamiliar garments that moved strangely in the wind.
One raised his hand. "Scour every chamber."
Another looked toward the upper floors.
"He cannot have gone far."
The first voice grew colder.
"He carries what is forbidden."
His fingers tightened around the object beneath his coat.
For the first time, the smirk disappeared.
'So, they know.'
A beam of light sweeps across the floor below.
He immediately pulls himself deeper into the darkness.
The light passed.
His heart hammered against his ribs.
One beat. Two. Three.
Too loud.
A shadow moved across the floor.
Then another. They were climbing!
He glanced toward the edge of the rooftop.
Six stories.
The street below was already crawling with people and vehicles.
Jumping would be suicide.
Staying meant being caught.
He looked down at the object in his hands.
The cloth covering it, clinging tightly to whatever lay beneath.
For the briefest moment, beneath the fabric something seemed to pulse.
Clack.
He froze.
The footsteps reached directly the floor beneath him.
He stopped breathing.
A voice rose through the unfinished structure.
"He is here!"
His blood ran cold.
The footsteps began climbing again.
Closer.
He pressed himself against the pillar.
Think.
West—
Nothing but open air.
East—
The adjoining building was too far.
South—
Six stories.
North—
The Wonderful stairs.
The footsteps grew louder.
"Father sermons."
Another voice.
"The decree shall not fail!"
Previous voice. "You dare disobey!?"
Silence.
A sudden gust of wind tears through the building.
The searchlights outside flickered.
The voices below became muffled beneath the roar.
He looked upward.
Dark clouds had swallowed the moon.
Thunder rolled across the heavens.
The search party stopped.
For several seconds, nobody spoke.
Then one of the voices said quietly:
"What is that?"
Another answered:
"The storm."
"No."
pause.
"Not a storm." His eyes narrowed.
The searchlights went dark.
All of them.
The city below suddenly disappeared into darkness. Lightning illuminating the clouds.
For a single instant, the entire skyline became white.
The figures below were gone.
He stared.
What?
He waited.
Nothing.
No footsteps.
No voices.
Nothing.
Slowly, he released the breath he'd been holding. His shoulders dropped.
"Ha!" A small laugh escaped him.
"They're gone."
He looked toward the staircase.
Empty.
Opposite building.
Empty.
He even waited several more seconds.
Still nothing.
A tired smile crept across his face.
"...Why did they stop?"
"Guess I'm not dying tonight." He leaned his head against the concrete pillar.
For the first time that night, he allowed himself to relax.
Drip.
A drop of water struck his cheek.
He looked up.
Another landed on his forehead.
Drip.
He wiped it away.
Then another.
And another.
Within seconds, the rain began falling harder.
He looked across the skyline.
High above, within the weeping clouds, all else are ants, wildly running about in fear.
The city was disappearing behind curtains of water.
Countless celestial lights flashing spirit into the gloomy sky, painting mysteries, man hasn't fathomed.
Dancing within these thunderclaps, is what all-mortals dread. A stroke of death, the divine punishment which heaven keeps.
Which man dares, oppose this? The weeping heavens, threatening to cleanse all in its wake.
You be a fool! Nature always wins, that's been the law since time immemorial.
Thunder rolled again.
He looked toward the sky.
But something about it felt wrong.
The clouds were moving.
Not with the wind.
Against it.
He frowned.
The storm wasn't moving in.
It was already here.
And somehow...
it felt as though it had come for him.
He slowly looked down at the object in his hands.
The cloth was drenched.
Beneath it, something faintly glowed.
He stared at it.
"You better be worth all this."
BDUMP!
Bdump!
BDUMP!
His heartbeat becomes louder.
His expression changed. "...Why is my heart so loud?
He swallowed.
Everything stops.
A flash of lightning illuminates his face.
"I've waited long enough." He lifts his eyes up to the heavens.
For a fleeting instant, his smirk returned.
Then the heavens answered.
BOOOOOOM.
The entire building shook.
The world lurched.
His eyes widened.
Agony explodes through his entire body.
The city lights flicker on and off.
Behold, a bright-white light, illuminating both the celestial heavens and all below.
Above in the heavens and all the splendor of, creeping from the clouds. Lightning had descended! And in the form of heavens judgement:
He's body had been mysteriously snatched and lifted off the ground, an act which was defying gravity itself.
But as soon as his ascension began, gravity also made its rightful claim on the matter.
Instinctively reaching out, he could only to grasp unto anything but empty air, falling back to the ground like a broken twig.
The trailing lightening had hit him then exploded right through his chest, leaving behind a gaping bloody hole.
Droves of his blood drenched the concrete beneath him, some splattered around as though a piece belonging to the renaissance.
He should be dead. But he stubbornly remains among the living, refusing to join-in on the afterlife fun.
Amidst all the blood and gore.
In the cavity of his now empty chest, lay a shining crystal, silently floating where flesh should have been. Illuminating the shattered bones and busted organs within.
It resembled an electric bolt with electric arcs bouncing off of it.
Something about it caused the crimson droplets to dance around it.
In the sky the storm rages in festivity, for its hand has been dealt, putting the mortal where he belongs. Grilled is the man who faces such might, doomed is such council which doesn't bow to the law, set by nature itself. To which, I told you so.
For man is but an insect before the heavens.
Laying there, in the tremendous amount of pain all his coherent thoughts were distorted.
Yet one still lingers.
'Am going to die.'
That very basal instinct of fear.
Makes him want to stay alive.
His brain, failing.
Coming to terms with the reality before it.
Impossible.
He tried taking in breaths, but was grasping at straws.
Seconds passed like an hour, but something shifts the momentum back.
ZAP.
The bolt-like-crystal starts to spin on its tip.
All the blood stops.
Drifts.
Separates from the murky rain water and flows back into the hole formed within his chest.
Encases the crystal within.
Times rewinds closing up the hole.
His mind gives out and he passes out.
His body starts glowing, the source, his chest.
Shinning with an ethereal light.
BUFF.
A burst of cloudy light swallows his body, shrinking out of existence.
Leaving the ground with no traces of his existence.
Somewhere far, far away.
The grassy fields, spawned across a vast plain, wind blew into the tranquility of the night.
As far as the eye could see this land, lay unclaimed by any civilization. The air, pure with no contaminants. The sound of crickets fades into the night following the waving blades of grass, as the usual calm of the night has its hold. The nocturne, on about their business break this delicate silence. Among them is bound to be a bigger competitor.
So, forth he came in a bust of a misty blue light.
BUMP!
A body martialized from thin air, dropping unto the rowdy fields.
A hush silence spreads.
A figure lay asleep hair bellowing in the wind. Its face, in tranquil innocence….
BUFF.
The body, disappears from the night, leaving behind a startled hungry fox confused about how its blessing slipped right through its paws. It clearly was about its business before a bizarre encounter with a strange beast. It decided to stalk this unaware prey then Bam, it's gone.
BUFF.
.....
BUFF.
.....
BUFF.
A burst of light, a body materializing out of nowhere.
The setting sun cast a pinkish glow as scenes of a cloudy pinkish blue sky and a green flush of flora seemed to want to merge into one as the body (POV) tumbled.
Soon a body of crystal-like water emerged into sight below.
His body unconsciously tumbling down mid-air, a light shone brightly within its chest, streaks of electric arc brilliance dancing around his form as he fall finally headfirst!
Past a cliff.
Then_
Into the pool of water.
SPLASH.
Branches move.
Footsteps.
She reaches the cliff. Hair blowing.
Then—
She jumps.
Diving straight into the water below, she grabs the body and swims back up, before quickly swimming towards the shore.
She checks for a pulse.
One beat.
...
Nothing.
...
Nothing.
...
Nothing.
Seeing that there is no pulse.
she immediately presses down on his chest performing CPR with unsettling calmness.
Then...
Beat. Bdump...
One.
Tiny.
Heartbeat.
It didn't take long before a gasp was earned, coughing up the water he had taken in, His eyes fluttered open for only a moment before the pain dragged him back into darkness.