Chapter One

The Dark

The dark held me at the back of the cave, I was afraid to move, just in case. My thoughts had been sent into turmoil after, you know. I couldn’t handle the pain. The constant desire to kill, to kill for revenge. I hoped the hero had understood the message, and Liam had understood the warning. The nineteenth of June really was cursed. First my father died on that day. It was the day Ellie was supposed to die and it was the date that Simon, Adam, Jessica, Tanya, Henry, James, Ellie, Lydia and Katie died. Katie’s final gaze haunted me. It tore me apart. I kept wishing it was all a dream. That they would walk around the corner and it would all be ok. The black phone vibrated next to me.

I read the caller ID, it was Liam, again. I couldn’t handle this, not now, not ever. I placed the phone back on the cold ground. The noise twisted into my thoughts, it was the perfect distraction. We had got so close, one more time and we would have won, beaten fate, but you can’t beat fate. I know that, this isn’t fate, I told myself. It is just the stubbornness of the rest of the magic world. If they were open to this, then they wouldn’t be dead.

I retraced my thoughts, the first time I lived this. The first time, it was too strong, Ellie didn’t survive. They were all distraught. They wouldn’t fight. No matter how much I encouraged them. Then they were charged and sent to the same fate as Ellie. We were forced to watch them die. They each had a day, Simon’s was the nineteenth of June. I watched as his mask covered the fear he was feeling. I stood with Adam, unable to stop watching. My mother stood behind the electric wall and watched her son, her pride and joy die, but not once did one flicker of emotion cross her face. His final words were ‘Aimee I’m sorry’ and his final gaze was sent to mother. The second his body hit the ground I screamed in disbelief, it wasn’t supposed to happen, it just wasn’t.

The pain was similar to what I felt now, but it was weaker, I thought I would never want to die as much as I did in that moment, I was wrong. As Liam’s day approached he managed to escape. I had to admit it must have taken guts. The night of his prison break he came to my room and Liam and I escaped into the big wide world. We were amateurs, they caught us. Liam and I escaped. We both agreed that this wasn’t fate and we would try to save them. It was only then when we remembered the Elliptical book. We arrived back at school and found the book. Willing plants, mermaids etc helped us to open the book, they agreed that they shouldn’t have died. Liam and I read the spell and we started again.

The memory echoed in my brain. The pain was etched into my thoughts. The faces, the death. It was too hard to make them come back. Maybe this was fate, maybe there was something bigger in store. My muddled thoughts tried to make sense, but it was no use, I had to do what I could. I didn’t know how long I had sat there, the light barely entered the black cave. All I knew was that I felt like dying. I had been crying the whole time I had sat here. The tears remains still burned my cheeks. Somehow the tears stopped, just before it was too much for me to handle.

The phone vibrated next to me again. Liam was obviously trying to tell me that he wasn’t going to kill me if I helped him. If anything was clear in my head, it was the fact that whatever he was doing was not fate. My arm was completely healed now, as was my head and all my other wounds. I leaved the 

darkness that currently contained me, but then I felt I wouldn’t be safe. I know that it sounds stupid, because the longer I stay in one place the more chance there is that they will find me, but in the dark at least settled my thoughts for a while, I knew the second I stepped on to the edge of the tall cliff and felt the wind brushing against my cheeks, I would start to cry again.

The memories flew about in my mind, bashing against the tight skull. Just over a year ago, I was here, but I was happy. No one was dead, we were doing well. Apart from Ellie, she couldn’t handle the heat trapped in the cave. We couldn’t help her. Then everything changed. It all lead to this, to fate.

My thoughts fled back again to the second time we came back, Liam and I vowed to stop any of them from falling in love. It almost worked, but Liam still loved Lydia and slowly everything returned. It took another year, and we were all about to leave school. Then Ellie was taken, everyone got caught on the way. They all died again. This time the book was in a different place. Another set of people helped us open it and go back again.

That time we decided to take a different approach. The day things went wrong, we decided, was the day Simon accidently channelled my vision. He saw exactly what I saw at that point. All of them, together. So on the third time I made sure that I was at least two miles away when I had the vision. When I returned it appeared to have worked. The problem was that Ellie and James were already in love. They hid it. After we left school we lead almost normal lives. Then Simon intercepted one of my visions. It was very vivid. They all sat in a cave and discussed their plans to overrun the magic council. Simon followed the vision and it happened. They fought. Liam tried to get to me, so that I could stop it, but it was too late. They were all gone. We went back to the book. The spell was read and we went back for a fourth time.

This time we decided we needed to let it run its course, but change the ending. I managed to change the frequency on the electric wall before Ellie touched it, so she didn’t die. They arrived and we ran back to school. We destroyed most of the school, saving the young, but not the old. This lead to a large battle. The school was set ablaze. We were so close, then Jessica died. Henry went to her. He died. Tanya went to him, she died. David went and the death continued. Only Adam, Liam (after I tugged him away from Lydia) and I survived. I told Adam to run. He did. I had never seen his legs blur so much. Liam and I found the book, we read the spell, we went back for the final time. I’m sure you know what happened on the fifth time.

My memory hurt when I saw Adam’s dead body pop into my head. The fifth time was the only time he died. The only time I killed him. My thoughts remained muddled in my head. I wanted to save them so badly, but I felt that I had to do something, something bigger, something unimaginable. The book is what I needed. It contained so many old myths and legends maybe I could find something in there. The book was in Katie’s mattress, and therefore, unreachable.

My thoughts turned to Adam’s phone. I had left it in room 10C. I wondered if our future hero had found it yet. Hopefully, upon seeing it they will call the first number in the phone book, me. I ran my hand through my hair. The knots slowly loosened and then came undone. The phone beside me vibrated again. I placed it in my hand. The smooth black exterior rumbled in my grasp. The name lit up. It was probably Liam again. I felt like opening it and closing it again, I wasn’t going to talk to him. The annoying Nokia tone continued to play. The sound bouncing off each wall. Echoing around my 

head. Then the rusty wheels began to turn once again. When Liam called, it wasn’t the Nokia ringtone. It was some other slightly less annoying ringtone. Only one person knew that I loathed the Nokia ringtone so much, sometimes I wanted to bite whoever had it. I gasped as I looked at the caller ID.

Room 10C works fast. Only one person knew, only one person, only Adam.