A child of two worlds will walk between flame,
Bearing a shadow that whispers his name.
Friendship will falter, a promise will bend,
When crowns of betrayal bring blood to an end.
The king long forgotten will rise in his place,
Madness and ruin carved deep in his face.
Through night without dawn, the war shall ignite,
Till chains forged of darkness are shattered by light.
…
A mouse is born.
A mouse is hungry.
A mouse wants to eat.
A mouse is scared of people.
A mouse eats in the dumpster behind the restaurant of people.
A mouse hates this food.
A mouse can smell the food in the restaurant.
Slowly the mouse desire for the food overtakes its fear.
The mouse enters the restaurant and eats its food.
The mouse loves the food so it continues to sneak into the restaurant.
...The mouse is killed.
The mouse was killed by a person yes... but the thing that really killed the mouse was desire...
Desire will kill all beings one day.
So why not desire nothing?
Because that is impossible, everything must desire something.
But humans are the worst. Humans desire everything.
Fame, Power, Money, Food, Men, Women.
And one day a human will be killed by its desire...
Or maybe it won't... Maybe the mouse will continue to feast and die of old age.
If that was the case that mouse would die happier then the mouse in the dumpster.
Even if the mouse was to die young eating food in the restaurant.
Would he die happier young but having got to eat amazing food or happier old but never getting to taste anything but garbage.
So while desire may kill man, that is not to say that desire is evil.
The only person who can say whether desire is good or evil is the man who is killed by its hands.
...
The morning sun filtered weakly through dirt-stained windows, casting pale shadows across the cluttered bedroom where Ryan Chambers lay sprawled across his unmade bed. His breathing was heavy and rhythmic, punctuated by occasional snores. His bedsheets had worked loose during the night, sliding toward the hardwood floor.
His black hair, naturally thick and unruly, now resembled something that might nest small birds. Cowlicks jutted in every direction, creating a chaotic crown of tangles.
The digital alarm clock on his nightstand suddenly erupted into its daily assault. Beep beep beep, the sharp, electronic sound cut through the quiet room, designed to jar even the deepest sleeper.
But Ryan, lost somewhere in whatever dreams still visited him, remained motionless. His body had grown accustomed to ignoring the world's demands. The alarm continued its relentless chorus, each beep seemingly louder than the last.
Minutes passed. Finally, Ryan's body responded with the bare minimum effort required. He rolled onto his side with a grunt, presenting his back to the offending device. The beeping continued, slightly muffled but no less insistent.
Then came a voice from beyond his bedroom door, his mother's voice, carrying that particular tone mothers worldwide have perfected: equal parts exasperation, authority, and barely contained frustration.
"Ryan!" The word cracked through the air like a whip.
At last, a reaction. Ryan's eyes snapped open, though they remained unfocused and heavy. A low moan escaped his lips. He groaned deeply and swung his legs over the side of the bed.
The hardwood floor felt cold against his bare feet as he stood, swaying slightly. His hand shot out toward the alarm clock with considerably more force than warranted, slamming the off button hard enough to make the nightstand shudder.
Blessed silence fell over the room, broken only by distant sounds from outside, cars passing, dogs barking.
Ryan stood there, staring down at nothing in particular. The silence felt heavy and oppressive, filled with all the things he didn't want to think about, all the responsibilities he didn't want to face, all the questions about his future he had no desire to answer.
A full minute passed before he slowly turned his head to the right. There, mounted beside his closet, hung a tall mirror that had witnessed this same morning ritual countless times.
The reflection was not kind. Ryan found himself face to face with a boy who looked older than his seventeen years, worn down by experiences that should never have touched someone so young. His hair was an absolute disaster, sticking up at impossible angles. Dark circles hung beneath his eyes like purple bruises.
His skin bore the persistent evidence of stress and poor care, small patches of acne scattered across his forehead and cheeks. His frame, which should have been filling out naturally, instead carried the soft weight of someone who had given up on taking care of himself, someone who found comfort in food when comfort was scarce elsewhere.
He simply stared at this reflection with pure disgust. Not the dramatic, performative kind of self-criticism teenagers sometimes indulged in, but something deeper, a fundamental disappointment with the person looking back at him.
By all objective measures, he knew he was not pleasant to look at. More troubling was the knowledge that this was entirely within his power to change, yet that power felt as distant and unreachable as the stars. He had no strength for self-improvement, no energy for the sustained effort that change required. Ryan had discovered over the past seven years that he had very little strength for anything at all.
Seventeen years old, soon to turn eighteen and graduate from high school, these should have been milestones filled with excitement and possibility. Instead, they felt like arbitrary markers on a path he wasn't sure he wanted to walk.
Seven years ago, when he was just ten years old, his father had died in a car accident. The official reports said it was no one's fault, just one of those terrible coincidences that sometimes shatter lives without warning.
But Ryan knew better. Ryan knew the truth that ate at him every single day: it was all his fault. Every detail of that terrible day remained burned into his memory with cruel clarity, and no amount of therapy or medication had been able to convince him otherwise. The guilt sat in his chest like a stone, heavy and cold and impossible to dislodge.
Ever since that day, nothing had felt real. It was as if someone had placed a thin sheet of glass between him and the rest of the world, making everything seem slightly distant, slightly muffled, slightly off. He moved through his days on autopilot, going through the motions without ever feeling truly present in his own life.
Everything felt fuzzy around the edges. He couldn't bring himself to care about anything, not school, not his future, not the concerned looks his mother gave him. It was as if he had become less of a living, breathing boy and more like an avatar in some video game he wasn't fully engaged in playing.
The past seven years had been a blur of therapy sessions, medication adjustments, failed attempts at making friends, and grades that barely scraped by. He did just enough to get through each day, and only because he couldn't bear to add his academic failure to the list of things his mother had to worry about. Their relationship, once warm and easy, had become strained and distant, not through any fault of hers, but because he had simply stopped talking to her after his father's death, stopped sharing his thoughts and feelings, stopped being the son she remembered.
Standing there in front of the mirror, that familiar question rose unbidden: 'Why am I still alive?'
It wasn't asked with self-pity or dramatic flair, but with genuine curiosity. He truly didn't understand why he continued to exist when he felt so little connection to life itself, why people like his father—good people who loved life and lived it fully, had to die while he, someone who could barely summon the energy to care about his own existence, kept going day after day.
The question hung in the silence of his room, as it had so many mornings before, before he finally shook his head and turned away from his reflection. There was no answer to be found there.
With movements of routine rather than enthusiasm, Ryan began getting ready for another day at school.
A/N: Hello! my name is Abtho if this is your first time reading one of my books I hope you enjoy! This book is something special to me, it was my first novel over a year ago before I decided I wasn't happy with it and decided to rewrite it. This book means a lot to me and in my opinion is the best thing I've done to date so I do hope you all enjoy! I know the beginning might seem slower or less action packed then the average fantasy book on this site but I assure you if you stick with it you'll be treated to a truly outstanding story!