Farewell was supposed to be a big deal. At least, that’s what everyone said.
Four years of classes and studying were meant to end with some kind of feeling. For Dante, it was just the end of a long, boring performance.
In college, he was an outsider. He watched other people’s lives from the sidelines, a ghost at their party. If he disappeared, he knew no one would notice.
And honestly, he didn’t care.
"I’m done pretending I care," he muttered to his reflection in the men’s room mirror.
The face staring back was a stranger’s. A boy with tired, dark eyes and a thin, unimpressed mouth. He adjusted the ceremonial sash over his blazer.
’One last performance,’ he told himself. ’Then I can finally leave.’
Outside, the party was roaring toward its fake climax. Crimson and gold banners sagged from the rails.
A display poster declared, "Batch of 2025. Soar High!" with a kind of desperate optimism.
He wondered how many of them would even remember that once real life started beating them down.
"And now, our final dramatic act for the evening. Adieu, Alma Mater!" The announcer’s voice was painfully cheerful.
It was some skit meant to make them feel nostalgic for a place they hadn’t even left yet.
On the floor, couples held hands and groups of friends huddled together for one last round of selfies. Their faces lit by the ghostly glow of their phones.
His own phone stayed in his pocket.
’What am I going to take a picture of? My empty corner of the room?’
When the lights dimmed for the final slow song, the dance floor filled. Gowns swirled against tuxedos, and laughter rose in waves that never quite reached the stairs where he sat.
He counted the lightbulbs in the ceiling.
’Let it end,’ he thought. ’Please, just end.’
His wish came true. Just not how he expected.
The first flash was like a broken spotlight, so blinding it made him flinch.
The second one split the roof open.
A jagged column of white-blue lightning, thick as a tree trunk, shot straight through the ceiling. It didn’t just strike the disco ball. It erased it in a silent puff of silver dust.
The sound came a half-second later.
It wasn’t a noise. It was a physical force that punched the air from his lungs and turned the world into a wall of static.
Every nerve in his body screamed. For one long, blind moment, he thought the world was collapsing in on itself, with him at the very center.
’So that’s it,’ a detached part of his brain noted. ’I’m really dying on graduation night. How absurd.’
But he didn’t die.
When his vision cleared, the auditorium was gone. Above him was a vast, endless sky full of stars.
He was lying on cool, wet moss. The air smelled of fade, so clean it almost hurt to breathe in.
Around him, his classmates were starting to stir. Their faces were lit by the strange glow of two moons he had never seen before.
One was a perfect, white pearl. The other was a sickly, shattered green.
One hundred of them, plucked from a party and dropped into a forest like terrified, confused children.
Panic began to bubble up.
"Where are we?"
"Was that a terrorist attack?"
"Check for injuries, Ariel’s bleeding!"
Voices overlapped, sharp with fear. A girl started sobbing, her cries sounding small and thin in the huge, ancient silence of the woods.
Someone else was just cursing, over and over again.
Then, everything went quiet. Not slowly, but all at once.
In the clearing before them, silver specks of light began to drift together. They swirled and brightened until they formed the shape of a woman.
She floated a few inches off the ground, glowing with a soft white light that didn’t cast a shadow.
Her hair was the color of sunrise, and her eyes looked like they’d seen the birth of stars.
"Welcome, heroes," she said. Her voice was a whisper in the ear and a deep tolling bell in the bones, all at once.
"I am Liora, Goddess of Light. Forgive me for summoning you so suddenly."
A collective gasp went through the crowd. The varsity football captain found his voice first, shouting, "Send us back! We have families!"
Liora tilted her head, and a look of ancient sadness crossed her perfect face.
"If I could, I would. But this is a pact older than your world. Every fifty years, champions are called. This time, it was you."
"What gives you the right!" a skinny boy yelled, his fists shaking.
The goddess’s light seemed to dim a little.
"The choice was not mine. But I will grant you what I can. Strength, purpose, and a chance to become more than you are."
"All hundred of us?" asked Eric, the class valedictorian. He always focused on the numbers.
Liora’s glow flickered. "I cannot promise that."
A new, colder fear spread through them.
"Explain," demanded Maya, head of the debate club.
The goddess folded her hands.
"To become heroes in this world, you must first survive the Trial of Verdant. Only those who pass will earn the right to walk the lands of Zerawell."
"I do not know how many of you will still be alive when the final gate opens."
Chaos erupted. People were begging, cursing, trying to bargain.
But underneath it all was a single, brutal fact. They weren’t students anymore. They were prey, thrown into a game where they didn’t know the rules.
Liora raised her arms. Threads of light spun from her fingertips, weaving glowing symbols over each of their heads.
"These are your unique skills, an echo of your truest potential. Form alliances. Learn to use your gifts. The twin moons will be your only guide out of this forest."
The stars overhead seemed to shift.
"There are monsters in these woods," she warned. "Plan, train, and win. That is your only path."
’So the game begins.’
Dante felt something sharp and coppery on his tongue. It wasn’t fear. It was excitement.
The deep, heavy boredom that had clung to him back home cracked and fell away, revealing a spark he thought had died years ago.
’The performance was over. The real show was just beginning.’
"Approach one by one," Liora commanded, her voice regaining its power.
"I will grant your skill and answer a single question for each of you. Then I must leave you to your destiny."
A broken, hesitant line began to form.
Dante didn’t join the line. He hung back. He watched. He listened.
’Knowledge is power,’ he thought, a cold, sharp smile touching his lips for the very first time.
’And patterns are the key to knowledge.’