Chapter 1
She kept running.
Choking on her own shallow breaths, her legs on fire, her heartstrings vibrating with the sounds of her boots hitting the concrete.
She does not know where she is, or where she is going. She only runs. There is a faceless man chasing her, and she has to move, move, move. To stop is to die.
Millions of girls are running with her, just as terrified. Countless reflections of her on the Mirror walls of the labyrinth.
She hears the clack clack clack of dancer shoes getting close behind her. The rhythm melting into a song, the ending of her long, miserable life.
A shadow caresses her back, and she instantly accelerates, her screams trapped in her throat. Cold sweats freeze her back, despite the heat of her run. For a fraction of a second, she looks back.
And she finds him. Still on her trail.
There is a hole on his head, instead of a face. He wears an elegant trench coat over black loose trousers, a white shirt and a black bowtie. Something silver shines in his hand. It is a pocket knife.
Stained with blood.
She looks at her right hand, as if she forgot something important.
She stops.
A long, fresh cut decorates her palm, slicing it horizontally from her index finger to her pinky. A sickening thought hits her.
The cut looks like she grabbed the pocket knife the wrong way.
From the cutting edge.
She did that on purpose.
She wants to keep running, but her legs buckle as she falls to the ground.
A shadow looms over her.
The man– he approaches– he is here!
his face— It grows sharp teeth — a bloody smile — it is saying something—
His name!
She knows. She has always known.
He is—--
I wake with a piercing pain in my stomach. Rising bile reaches my throat, and I immediately throw up on the floor.
My head is throbbing like a million hammers came knocking on it, willing to break my skull. My voice is hoarse from the effort. My body aches like I have gone up from a thousand-year-long slumber.
My vision becomes blurry, and when it finally clears, I can look around me.
It is my room. I sigh with relief. I am still at home. I don’t know what time it is, what day it is, and the year is a complete mystery to me. I keep no calendars around. No mirrors. No need to look at an ugly face everyday. I reach a hand to the pale parchment-colored walls, as if to make sure they are real.
Everything has been the same since…since what? I can’t remember.
My name. I know my name, at least.
Luna.
I am sixteen years old. I have been living in this house for as long as I can remember. I know nothing else of life outside, but I am sure it is nothing but a mundane mess.
There is a wooden desk across the bed. It is completely empty, minus a strange notebook I have never seen before. I hesitate to grab it. Next to the desk, the door of my room is shut. Why…why did I close it before sleeping? I have always kept it open. I….don’t remember this detail.
I don’t have any belongings. Not that I can afford any. There is nothing here that could be labeled as Luna’s.
Well, except for the notebook.
I end up grabbing it. It’s a hard back. Coated with a dark leather cover. Strange.
Why would a hard back be covered? Isn’t it hard for a reason?
I swallow loudly, reminding myself to stay focused, to stay alive. And I open the notebook.
Dear Luna,
What I am about to tell you will be hard to believe.
The following sentence, to my surprise, is blurry, as if the pencil was scratched multiple times by a bad quality eraser. The shadow of a writing remains, visible to the squinting eyes.
You.
Are.
I blink.
The next word is foreign to me. I am not sure I understand the language anymore. I swallow hard. And before saying it out loud, I look down at my bare feet.
I curse myself for not noticing.
If you really look, if you really focus, you can see the flowered pattern of the tiles through my skin.
I slowly, carefully, put my hand on the notebook.
It’s no longer white. It has turned into a grey shade, mixing my skin color with the black of the notebook.
I am see-through.
I then reopen the notebook where I left off. I reread the sentence, wishing from the bottom of my heart that it was nothing but a dream. My own daily delusions. My insanity finally kicking in, swallowing me whole.
It is not.
You are dead.
I can’t control myself.
I throw the book on the wall behind me with as much strength as I can manage. The book is possessed with dark magic. That must be it. Turning me into unworldly shapes. I hear a powerful klang, only for it to softly land on my bed.
Is it even still my bed?
I turn around and freeze.
I notice two things that completely escaped my mind, up till now.
The first is that the door is now wide open.
Someone is with me in the room. Someone invisible. And he used the door to leave.
The second is that my bed is completely covered in blood.
