Prologue

My battered, bruised and bare feet slam on the groundless ground. I feel my heart beat like a hummingbird's wings, one thousand beats a minute. My head throbs and I ache for home like I never have. And yet I must keep running. It is impossible to turn back; there is no home to return to. Where there was once life, there is now an empty void. That’s what this all is: an empty void. All around me is...nothing. Everything is blank, gone, and everywhere I turn there’s emptiness waiting to welcome me into its arms, in a not so loving embrace. Where am I? I am afraid I cannot answer that, for this is nowhere. This place doesn’t exist, and yet here I am. I call out my mother’s name, but it is pointless. I call out for Aille; still, no reply. I have been condemned to hell. And it is all because of that stupid game. The game that everyone plays because winning would mean you get everything you’ve ever wanted. No one ever finds out what happens to the losers.
I know what happens to the losers, though. I know everything about that idiotic gam.. Everyone always thinks it is harmless, but they don’t pay any attention to the fact that the losers always go missing. They just…vanish. Poof. Gone, into thin air. But the game makes everyone forget about it, brainwashes them even. I realize, as I run through nothingness, that I too was brainwashed. When Aille won the game, I became completely oblivious to everything else but her. And when the time came again for the game, I went all out for it.
But then. . .I lost.