CHAPTER 1: THE PRECIPICE OF THE DAMNED
“Go home, cursed boy!!!”
A heavy leather boot slammed into my jaw, crushing my face straight into the freezing mud. The copper taste of blood flooded my mouth. Above me, the bright screens of a dozen smartphones flashed. My high-status classmates giggled, angling for the best shot.
“Look at him eat it!” someone shouted.
“f*****g waste of space,” another sneered.
I tried to push myself up, but a hand clamped into my hair, ripping my head back with brutal force. I gasped, staring straight into the cold, mocking eyes of Davon Sungate.
“You really thought you belonged here, Lux?” Davon asked, his voice a low, venomous purr. He leaned in close, his breath hot against my ear.
“Here’s a little secret for your final moments. This wilderness excursion? Your execution has already been planned. It’s going to look like a tragic, clumsy accident.”
“You won’t get away with this,” I wheezed, spit and blood leaking from my lips. “The academy rules… the automated headcount tracker. If I vanish, the system flags it instantly. The professors will know. The grid logs everything.”
Davon threw his head back and laughed, a sharp, barking sound that made his lackeys join in instantly.
“The headcount?” Davon mocked, nodding to the three hulking sycophants standing right behind him. “He thinks the machine saves him! Hey, grab him.”
Before I could twitch, six hands gripped my jacket and jeans. They hoisted me up, my feet dangling uselessly over the sheer, terrifying drop of the forbidden northern cliff. The wind howled from the abyss below, tearing at my clothes.
“Count to three!” Davon barked at his lackeys.
“One!” the first shouted.
“Two!” the second yelled.
“Three!” the third roared.
“Time’s up, cursed boy,” Davon smiled.
But he didn't just let them drop me. Davon lunged forward, his boot driving violently into my chest. At the exact same microsecond, his arms lashed out, grabbing his own three lackeys by their collars. With a horrific, manic surge of strength, Davon dragged all three of them right over the edge with me.
“Davon—!” one screamed, his eyes bursting with sudden, lethal betrayal.
“No physical evidence,” Davon spat down at us, his face vanishing from the ledge as we fell. “No witnesses.”
The wind roared like a dying beast. The three lackeys screamed, flailing blindly in the open air as gravity claimed us. The cliff face blurred past in a sickening rush of gray stone and sharp pines.
This is it, I thought. I’m dead.
Then, the air snapped.
The terminal velocity of my plunge abruptly halted. It didn't feel like hitting a net; it felt like the laws of physics simply inverted. A formless, ancient gravitational force seized my body mid-air, violently yanking me sideways, away from the jagged rocks at the bottom of the canyon.
The three screaming lackeys kept falling, disappearing into the mist below.
I was dragged through a concealed, shadowed fissure in the mountain wall, hurtling deep into the earth. The air turned freezing, thick with the smell of ozone and millennia of dust. My body skidded across a smooth, obsidian floor, rolling violently until I crashed against the base of a massive, ruined pillar.
I groaned, clutching my ribs. The space was colossal. Towering stone columns stretched into a vaulted ceiling dripping with dark energy. A hidden subterranean temple.
“So, the bloodline still flickers in the dark,” a voice echoed.
It didn't come from the room; it vibrated directly inside my skull.
I scrambled backward, my boots scraping against the stone. Out from the oppressive shadows, a figure materialized. It was an ancient, skeletal being, its flesh like tightly wound parchment over bone, eyes glowing with a faint, chilling blue light.
“Who are you?” I demanded, my voice trembling but sharp. “Where am I?”
“I am Ladiskha,” the skeletal figure whispered, the air pressure in the temple dropping so fast my ears popped. He stepped closer, the dark energy swirling around his feet like a living cloak. “And you sit in the tomb of your ancestry, Lux. You are no curse. You are the direct descendant of Orcus the Great, the first son of Hades.”
My breath caught. “That’s impossible.”
Ladiskha leaned down, his hollow stare piercing into the very depths of my soul. “The blood does not lie. The world has trampled you, boy. It has broken your bones and cast you into the dirt.”
He extended a withered, skeletal hand toward me, dark violet sparks of pure gravitational force crackling across his knuckles.
“Tell me, descendant of the underworld,” Ladiskha whispered, his voice absolute and heavy with terrible promise. “Do you want the power to trample the world?”
