An Invitation

Night stood in the middle of nowhere. Bright sunlight attacked his eyes, and the heat was trying to steam him under the thick layer of cloth hanging on his body.

Adjusting to the sun's bright rays, Night squinted his eyes and looked forward. A vast sea of sand greeted him.

'What... Where am I? ' 

Night lifted his feet only to feel them weigh more than they usually do. Boots that were filled with scorching sand were real torture for someone who has thin soles.

'I'm glad I'm thick-skinned.'

Night took one layer of the cloth hanging on his body and folded it three times. He was not about to step on sand that was boiling like hot oil as he removed some of it from his boots. As he folded the cloth he realized that the metal bracelets were nowhere to be found in his wrists.

After doing the deed, Night studied his situation.

Moments ago, he was sitting in the corner of the room inside the Awakened Station, waiting for the head officer of District 8 along with the annoyingly handsome guy named Liam. So, how did he open his eyes in the middle of a desert?

"Haa. This is driving me nuts."

Night frowned and started to track the desert, hoping to find another human being before he dies of thirst. However, for hours and hours, Night never saw a single silhouette, which was understandable as he knew that deserts were supposed to spread wide and far. However, what he found suspicious was the feeling in his throat.

Miles of walking, the sun burning through his clothes, and yet Night still hadn't felt parched. No heavy breaths, only cold sweat running down his chin.

'What... What the hell is happening? '

Flabbergasted by his condition, Night stopped on his tracks and wiped the sweat out of his forehead using the back of his hand.

'Should I go back? '

Night questioned his decision and looked at the direction he came from. Squeezing his eyes shut, Night turned his body.

The sand beneath his feet quaked vehemently. Losing his balance, Night expected to fall on his back if not for the sand where he stood, which did not blow up like a vicious volcano erupting lava.

Night's nearly weightless body flew several meters above the ground.

'Oh, damn.'

Putting his arms on each side of his head, Night fell to the sand after gravity did its job well this time as well. Although thankful to the sand for only burying his body almost six feet under it, Night has no intention of sparing it a curse from him.

'I'm alive...'

Night, standing back up, glared at the spot where he stood earlier. But he did not expect his gaze to meet another's.

Night's eyes returned to their stoic form as he watched a centipede's dozens of legs wriggle in its body. Centipedes and other worse insects were scattered everywhere in the slums, and it was enough for Night to get sick of them. He was more than used to the sight of all kinds of insects, as he slept almost every night beside them.

That was for the insects that he could easily crush with just a smack of his bony arms. However, it would be a different topic if that insect were to be five feet taller than him.

'Am I about to get smacked by a freaking insect? '

If there was something that Night didn't expect, it's that Karma loves to hit him back harder than he hit it. Night shifted on his feet, watching the five-foot-tall centipede with sharp eyes, and without any hesitation, Night's feet stomped on the sand and ran in the opposite direction of the centipede.

He had no plans of getting squashed like an insect by an insect. However, Night had no idea if he would be able to outrun his predator. He didn't know if his thoughts would connect with reality.

'I just need to do everything I can.'

With beads of sweat rolling down his forehead, desperate gasps of breath, and exhausted legs, Night thought to himself. He could not even try to be optimistic just once.

Night never relied on someone else from the moment he could think for himself because he knew that relying on someone could only result in two ways: being a burden and owing that someone. Night had learned this the hard way.

His mother always told him not to burden anyone every single time she got the chance to. Night learned how to carry his own weight at an early age. Relying on his mother to feed him garbage made him owe her for her supposedly hard work.

Night hated how he had the person who made him suffer by being born from this world in his mind near the time of his death. However, he was also grateful because he got to experience something challenging for once. He waited and waited for the reaper to steal his soul, but all he got was a shout from a raspy voice.

"Duck, you punk!"

Eyes widening, Night bent his back with a force that he didn't know was on his body just before something traveling two hundred hours per kilometer pierced through his head. His back slammed down on the scorching sand, but he didn't heed it and turned to lie in his stomach, looking at something he barely dodged, which made the centipede's head explode from its speed alone.

"What the heck was that?"

Night unknowingly whispered through the desert wind before a shower of dark purple blood soaked him from his head to the tip of his boots.

Night closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. His lips were pressed into a line.

"Getting soaked with blood was your fault, not mine."

The man who killed the centipede reached Night's side while staring at the headless creature.

With a closer look, Night realized that the thing that killed the centipede was a piece of glowing stone. He knew too well what that glowing stone was.

A mana shard A crystal that holds a condensed mana that all awakened ones greatly desire to have yet rarely do. He have seen some on billboards while roaming around the city. A shard with hundreds of bright colors, however, Night had never seen anything that was as bright as the mana shard lying on the sand in front of him.

'Did he throw that with bare hands? '

Night thought, hiding his expression of flabbergast.

"Hey, punk! I can smell divinity in you, but there's also a scent of death. Too much divinity and little death—unbalanced properties aren't good."

The man blurted in the middle of the silence. Night's forehead creased at his words. Divinity and death Two different things can be smelled in him, and there was too much divinity?

'I can't believe there's still a little good left in me.'

Night thought to himself, smirking inwardly at the amusement he was feeling.

"I'll give you this as a gift." The man grabbed Night's hands and placed a black orb in them. "And this," he said, grabbing the mana shard from the sand and adding it to the black orb in Night's hand. "Treat this as a giveaway. Now, off you go."

Night was still staring at the mysterious things with a stupefied look when the man flicked his finger on his forehead. Night closed his eyes, surprised. It hurt, and Night felt like he just had a hole in his head.

'Wait, who was that man again? '

Night thought as he tried not to scorn the man once he opened his eyes.

However, upon opening his eyes with daggers ready to shoot at the man, Night sent a glare at a man with blue irises, a high nose, pale skin, and blonde hair.

"Well, I didn't mean to disturb you. There's no need to glare at me like that."

Liam sent a smile towards Night, only to get a hand, smacking his pretty face and pushing it away. The smile didn't leave his face, as he took it as a natural reaction. After all, the first thing that Night saw was Liam's face, which was inches away from his.

"Well, I didn't expect you to open your eyes. It's only been 6 minutes since we arrived."

Liam's eyes found his wristwatch as he calculated the time spent after their arrival. He looked back up at Night, his eyes filled with his undying amusement. For a decade, after Liam became a Legion, he never once saw an awakened building his core without any sort of guidance, much less if that awakened was not yet called by the Sage. Night's circumstances were too different for neither Liam's erudition nor wisdom.

"So, Awakened Night, are you ready to be catechized?"

Liam wasn't able to finish his sentence because of a ring—not from his mind, but the ring for a message sent to all awakened ones.

A hologram appeared in the air at the center of the room.

[Seekers! An invitation is being sent to you to join the first ever Chaos Dance!

Will you accept? Yes/No]