Akli…

  Dare does he stand above the valley that once consumed him. A gentleman looked down at the dark impasse. “I will not falter, I will not fall, nor shall I fail… This city, this country, this world…” Falling from the edge, his suit too big for his malnourished body billowed with the force of his diving body. Swinging his shoulders he brought his form back up onto the ledge, clinging swiftly enough to not plummet. Ghastly eyes stare at sweat dripping into his shadow.

  “Someone is squatting…there!” Akli shouted in shock. Across the sea of emptiness, a radio tower, the visage in white squatted in the passage of Akli’s eye.

  “Pay attention!” The figure announced

  “Me?” Akli pointed to himself in surprise.

  Jaromir leaned back with a mischievous smile, his figure dancing between the lines of what was real and what was not. Was it day or was it night? Akli could not tell, it was as though the world turned, and had become evening. The time on his watch did not change, it was still eight in the morning as it was when he walked up there.

  “Saint Akli Graham! What are you doing? You shouldn’t be up this high,” said a common employee.

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  “Ah, yes, indeed I am Saint Akli Graham,” the gentleman said with somber eyes. His visage changed like the zephyr. “Horo, worry not, I am a competent man.”

  “I wondered where you were… Haah, you have a meeting in an hour, please…” Horo’s slanted eyes spoke with soft disappointment. As his gelled hair made his scalp cold when up so high in the sky.

  “Someone is… Well, they were sitting…” Akli murmured.

  “Could you not fool around? If people see, they will think you’re neurotic or suicidal.”

  “Horo-boy… Don’t be so formal when we’re alone.”

  Horo grinned softly. “Searching for you always leads me to forget Val, and all that. After you,” Horo gestured. Graham flinched, but kept his silence as the two walked back.

  Later that night…

  A black hound made of blacker flame, swirling tattoos blemished its figure, the flames carved away the ink inscribed inside its skin. Its legs dashing along the highway like a night-trout. Burning away, many claimed to have seen it. But on the next day…

  Ontiganel mountain academy:

  Dushyanta scratched his head. “Still not here? How could that be?”

  Fester laughed, a gaudy laugh that no one else found appealing. Another day where the new student had not made his appearance.