Prologue

I remembered the darkness, the cold embrace of the Abyss as it dragged me down, screaming and filled with terror. I remembered reached out and watching as the circle of reality that had been my life, my future, slowly got smaller and smaller until I could no longer clutch it at all. It had slipped away from me as I plummeted down, down, down to an endless depth I could not bring myself to see. When I had finally hit something solid, my shoulder was plunged in a freezing pool of water. A pool that, consequently, I couldn't see any end of in miles. It was a world of silence, dense and bottomless, so thick it was deafening. It could be cut with a knife the way it hung in the air.

The moment I got out of there, I pushed it all out of my mind -the way it had tormented me and haunted me. However, the blank and baron death trap that was the Abyss, was not what I recalled the most from such a place. No. It hadn't been the uncountable hours of time it felt like I'd wandered those plains. It hadn't been the terrifying monsters that had chased me and tried to kill me that had rung in my ears, or the sound of my own horrified, shrill wails of fear. It hadn't even been the back-breaking loneliness that had consumed me and turned my heart to stone.

What I recall the clearest in a place capable of twisting your mind and snapping your sanity like a tiny chopstick…it had been the boy that had saved me.

I barely go back to that time, but those last few moments were as bright as if they had happened only a few seconds before.

I'd seen them…tiny, beautiful violet petals, curled to form crescent moons. I'd stared and stared at them as they sat afloat the deep black water of the Abyss, spinning ripple after ripple as if they'd been tossed in. They had been the most magnificent thing I had ever seen and I'd smiled -something I had not done in so long I barely remembered what it meant anymore. I'd smiled, a snowy white hand reaching out against my will in wonder, just eager to feel something, anything other than this freezing nightmare. My fingers had ran across the delicate flesh of that petal and it had shuddered with happiness and ecstasy. A stuttered and crazy giggle had escaped my lips and I'd fallen to my knees, lifting it from the water and clasping it in my hands. It had been warm -so warm- and I hadn't been able to stop myself from running it down the plains of my cheekbone, my nose, my throat, anywhere that was bare and open, just to cherish this lost sensation that was warmth and softness. Then there had been the fragrance -oh, how I had lost myself in that scent! Sweet and alluring, it had driven me almost to madness, if I had not reached that stage already. It was hard to contemplate I hadn't when I was starved as much as I was, having found no food and only constant water but, these flowers, they awakened something within me and my eyes looked desperately for another and then another until it finally occurred to me that they were in some line. I picked them all up, scrounged every passion from them before dropping them back from where I had found them and moving on. There had to have been a trail of at least a thousand of them, possibly more, yet I took them all and I starved them all as this Abyss had starved me, stolen me and broken me into pieces. I could no longer have called myself the respectable lady that I had been back then, it was impossible. I'd had no mind to function and follow my tasks, even simple ones, I was sure.

On my hands and knees, I had trudged through and I had claimed every tiny crescent of lilac life. I had done it until the very end when they disappeared in preference for something bigger and bolder. You might ask me what it is that one might find at the end of a trail of flower petals? I myself asked that very question. The answer, however, was very simple -so simple I had never expected it to be just so. At the end of this mauve road, sat the most wondrous and magnificent thing.

It was a flower, a ginormous purple nightshade.

Peering back into my minds eyes, all I saw anymore was awe from that moment, the exact second my eyes set upon the giant sky blue flower before me. It had been so queer, yet so wonderful and the petals…they almost glittered, shimmering at me with their own fluorescent release of light. Tiny orbs hovered above each and every petal, floating to places so high I wondered where they went. They reminded me of the wind when I carried the tails of dandelions upon it's smooth streams of wind, flying away from me to places I could not imagine. They soared like fireflies in the winter and twinkled just as bright. I remember staring at it and just watching for an unmemorable amount of minutes.

Then, something within it had moved and my heart had almost stopped, a stunned and terrified yelp caught in my throat. My knees had give out from the shock and I couldn't stop the shaking that overcame me, held me. It was almost as if I was as frozen as this world. I'd heard my heartbeat in my ears.

Gathump, It sounded, gathump.

There was a soft moan, dreamy and delicate, detached in a sort of way. I gawked at the flower, for a second pondering how such a lovely organism could make such a strange sound, such a human sound.

That was when I first laid eyes on him.

From within the depths of lavender bliss, he emerged. The first thing I saw of this boy was the smooth, fluid lines of his back, clothed dark, sleeveless coat. The tail of it was spread, pooling out from him as spilled ink floods a page, flowing over the petal his body was sat atop of. His hair was a gentle gold, like a soft and delicious field of hay, contrasting with the white of the shirt sleeves that extended his jacket. It gave his magnolia skin a subtle glow. As he leant forward on his hands, his face turned away from mine, I could see his body shudder with breath. My eyes followed the shallow rise and fall of his back, a alien warmth coating my cheeks. I wanted to cherish this feeling this boy gave me, this colour that had befallen my flesh. I found myself clawing my way towards him, the water tinkling and wet splashes sounding, echoing off this empty existence. His head reared then, as if in reaction to finally realising he was not alone, and, ever so slightly, he glanced over his shoulder at me, the curtains of silky blanch separating. From between that thin shred, soft drapes falling over his cheekbone, skimming his throat and disappearing further, I saw his face and almost lost my breath. It was like that of an angels -an angel with an eye like liquid amethyst, cool and breathtaking.

His eyes, they were curious. They were gentle, somehow, yet they were also dark. Something about them made my stomach knot and my inside curl with a sliver of fear, but something about them, also, drew me in. They were alluring and held emotions of a thousand different kinds. I couldn't hold just one to those eyes. There was too much held inside them. Curiosity, darkness, shock, understanding. Polar opposites tied together into one look that was as intolerable as it was tame. It possessed its own light and its own shadow, a being so complex it left you dazed. I had never seen a boy like this one, or witnessed a stare quite like his, nor did I think I ever would, but this would be noted well and truly after as the first meeting between him and I, my saviour, the Chain who pulled me from the Abyss and formed a contract with me. An illegal one Pandora would not approve of.

This was the first meeting where I met Alyck.