Prologue
Noel stood at attention beneath the apple tree.
He had left his armor behind. The clothes they had given him in its place sat strangely on his body — a stiff white shirt buttoned all the way to the throat, a silk tie cinched against it, a vest fitted snug over the shirt, and a jacket fitted snug over the vest. A chain ran from a pocket watch into his vest pocket and back out again. He could feel the seams of every layer. Whoever had pressed the suit had done it well, but the cloth was not made for someone used to moving in armor, and it caught against him in small unfamiliar places when he breathed.
His hair had been cut short for the occasion. Cropped close at the sides, combed back smooth on top. He had not seen himself in a mirror, but he could feel the difference. The wind on the back of his neck where there had always been hair before.
He kept his eyes forward.
The gatekeeper paced in front of him.
He was not an old man to look at. Younger than Noel, by appearances. Slight of build, easy in his shoulders, his footsteps making no sound on the grass. But there was a weight behind his eyes that did not match the rest of him, and Noel had been warned about it before he came up the hill.
The gatekeeper paced and Noel did not move.
When the gatekeeper spoke, his voice was even, almost weary, like a man reading aloud from a letter he had already read too many times.
“Young man. You have been chosen by your superiors and your peers for a mission of no equal. A mission many have been sent on before you, and which none of them has been able to complete. And yet we must keep trying. Because the crisis we are sending you to address is one of our own making. And because it is ours to set right.”
He stopped pacing.
He turned and looked at Noel directly for the first time.
“Are you prepared to be sent to the Fallen World?”
“Yes, sir.”
The gatekeeper studied him for a moment.
“Your ancestor, Joel, was sent down as well. A long time ago. He was the strongest of his generation. He failed all the same.” He paused. “You are skilled. So were all the others. The one you are looking for has never, in all this time, even been seen. Why would you be any different?”
“Because I have read their reports,” Noel said. “I have learned from their mistakes.” A small pause. “And because I am strong, sir. I have never been given a challenge I couldn’t meet.”
The gatekeeper raised an eyebrow.
“So your superiors told me.”
He looked Noel up and down the way a tailor might. Or a doctor.
“You should understand what you are walking into. The Fallen World is not like this one. The people there live in ways you have not seen and cannot imagine. You will witness true horror. You will know the dark of what human beings can do.” He held Noel’s eyes. “If you want to turn back, the time to do it is now.”
Noel did not move.
The gatekeeper acknowledged the silence with a small nod, almost to himself.
“It is a hundred years,” he said. “A hundred years of being tested by the people around you. Day after day. Year after year. Are you prepared for that?”
“Yes, sir.”
The gatekeeper was quiet a long moment.
Something in him seemed to soften, or to sharpen — Noel could not have said which. The young face tilted slightly to one side, the way a man’s face tilts when he has heard a sound he was not expecting and wants to be sure of it before he turns his head.
“Son of Eden,” the gatekeeper said. “What are you willing to sacrifice?”
Noel turned his head and looked at him.
“Everything.”
