Hello! Welcome to Season 1 of the Hunger Games SYOT series I'm working on. I've had a blast coming up with ideas for this fic and I've been working on the opening chapters loosely for a while. I'm excited to finally post it!

Author's Note: The first 7 chapters of this fic are entirely exposition/introductory and will not contain anyone's submitted tributes. This way I can update the chapters every 1-2 days to keep the fic active until all 24 slots have been taken. The fic may have a "slow" start, but the chapters will be posted quickly and after chapter 7 the reader tributes will begin to appear! Also note that most updates beyond the first 7 chapters will occur generally every 5-7 days.

SYOT Details:

(1) The tribute application form, along with the list of all remaining tributes is on my profile. If you would like to submit a tribute, please submit via PM (private messaging) so that way the details of your tribute remains a mystery for the readers!

(2) Currently, I am only accepting 1 tribute per reader. If anything changes, I will update this point.

(3) Death in the Hunger Games is inevitable. But when making the decision of who dies next, I will most likely protect the tributes of active readers. When a reader is active (reviewing, PMing me, etc) I know that they're really enjoying the fanfic, so I often want to preserve their tribute's life. That's just a good rule of thumb, and since there are no reader sponsorships, this gives the readers a chance to boost their tributes' lifespan. Don't hold me entirely to this method, though: I only said most likely, after all ;)

(4) If you have any questions or concerns, please message me. I'll be happy to assist with anything!

Chapter 1

Darkness Within

Everything was dark again—the entire world bathed in infinite blackness. He reached forward, almost absent-mindedly, his outstretched hands searching for anything recognizable. He felt nothing, and reached again, farther this time, his arms and hands moving fluidly, as though he were within a deep state of hypnosis. His fingers slipped through cold air, feeling nothing but a chilling breeze.

But he was in his bedroom. Indoors. There shouldn't have been a breeze.

Cole sat up in his bed, heart pounding and mind racing with the realization that something was wrong. Having escaped his ensnaring trance, the boy hobbled off the bed, his senses disoriented. He felt as if he had awoken from the deepest level of his subconscious, like a hibernating bear whose sleep had been altered by some strange anomaly.

"Hello?" he asked, as though expecting to be heard. As though the darkness of his bedroom would obtain a voice with which to whisper a profound response. "He-hello…?" he asked again, his tone shaky this time.

Cole stared into the blackness of his bedroom, squinting in attempt to discern a light source. But there was nothing.

A gentle breeze tickled his face. The hairs on his arms stood on end as his breathing became audibly tremulous. Slowly, he turned his head to the source of the cold air: the window. He realized it was open, the sound of curtains flapping in

Feeling his way through the darkness, Cole stopped in front of his window. He looked out, resting his elbows on the ledge. But what he saw—or rather, lack thereof—was wrong. There was nothing out there. Not just his bedroom, but the entire world was quilted beneath some kind of enduring darkness, like an all-consuming void.

The boy looked down at his feet. He shook his head rapidly and clawed at his hair, trying to unclog his mind. Reluctantly, he lifted his head and gazed outside, slightly leaning out this time, in attempt to extend his vision. As if by some other-worldly obligation, he saw something.

Many blocks down the road stood a lonely, ill-lit streetlight—abandoned, save for a cloud of fog that crept eerily beneath it. Cole squinted until his eyes were nearly shut, looking for any sign of life in the shroud of mist that clung to the streetlight. There was none.

He had never seen District Two like this. It wasn't uncommon for him to awake in his bed, startled and sweating from a nightmare; or to spend other nights lying awake, staring at his ceiling and unable to sleep. But during none of those times had he ever seen District Two so lifeless. Something about this night was entirely different.

Instinctively, Cole turned to check the time: three in the morning. Or was it four? He couldn't tell—his digital clock looked half-dead, the numbers fading and blurring together in unreadable shapes. Regardless, it was late. Too late for him to be prowling the streets, he told himself.

He turned back toward the window and looked out again, eyes full of mysterious wonder. Something intangible was calling to him. The more he stared at the streetlight, the more he yearned to be outside, standing beneath it. His mind encouraged him to stay put—to go back to bed—but his heart begged otherwise. His body was splitting, crumbling on itself as the voices inside his head and heart battled to be heard.

Without rationalization, he was halfway down the staircase at the far end of the hall, tip-toeing to ensure he didn't wake up his parents or sister. Like his bedroom, the hallway and staircase were unlit; he relied on his outstretched hands for spatial guidance.

He heard the transitional step into the kitchen as his shoes clicked against the tile floor. Cole rubbed his arms up and down with his hands, breathing bitterly. It was June—typically a warm month—but his house was freezing. He searched in the storage closet for his oversized jacket, zipping it on quickly and slipping out the front door.

On the porch, Cole promptly shut the door and stared into the night: silence. Through the darkness he could hear no cars, no noisy neighbors, not even a bird or an animal. His street had never been busy, lying on the outskirts of Two, but this was all wrong. And creeping through the darkness, damp to the touch, was a bed of cold, constricting fog. This new world was hardly District Two.

He began to feel nervous—alone. He never did anything like this, ever. He wasn't the adventurous type, and yet he couldn't help himself. The streetlight was a few blocks away, the only one of its kind that was lit.

The boy shuffled ahead slowly, thick fog dispersing at his movements. Before long, he fell into a speedy pace, eager to satisfy his curiosity and return to the safety of his home. The farther he walked, the quicker an unequivocal truth surfaced: the streetlight was malevolent.

The light had once looked deceptively close, but now it seemed miles away. When he stopped and looked back, his house was completely engulfed in the encompassing fog.

When he turned back, the streetlight had changed position, as if controlled by a supernatural hand. It was just a block away, fading in and out of the swirling fog. Through the illusive darkness, he unable to tell if the streetlight was distant or near. Cole stared at it, his legs adrift with a momentary loss of balance. At the echoing sound of his gasp, he realized that the world was silent and hollow.

Cole advanced cautiously toward the light, hands propped in front of his torso for protection. As if in synchronization with his movement, the light started to flicker, emitting a faint buzzing hum. Every time his feet touched pavement, the light flickered faster, blinking wildly like a warning sign: "go back while you still have the chance."

His heart beat like a drum in his chest. His hands were sweaty, his knuckles shaky and white. He heard his body imploring to return home, but his curiosity persisted. He felt hijacked, a mere husk of a once-was human—a shadow puppet whose free will had been stolen by a mind-controlling alien.

Cole was a step away from the streetlight. He lifted his arm, stretching it forward as a child would to a cookie jar. He squinted his eyes, hardly able to identify the post's marble-green architecture through the shroud of fog encapsulating it. The flickering grew furious and the buzzing louder, the entire scene painted in front of a perpetually black backdrop.

And then he touched it.

And the flickering and buzzing ceased. The light dimmed, but illuminated just enough to see through the encircling fog. Cole snapped back his hand, surveying it with a horrified expression as though it were diseased. For a moment he analyzed his hand, turning it over and stretching his fingers. Then he looked up in shock, his clouded mind beginning to clear. Slowly, he felt himself regaining the grasp on his own free will, his consciousness rapidly bestowed upon him in terrifying realization.

Panic-stricken, Cole stumbled away from the streetlight, his chest and lungs tensing. He inhaled cold air, taking large gasps to delay his lapse of breath. As he stood there, enveloped in a blanket of fog, the gentle buzz of a lonely streetlight testing his sanity and infesting his mind like a virus, he realized he was—for the first time all night—not alone.

This was a mistake, he swore. His eyes tore dizzily through the dense emptiness, searching for his house among rows of charcoal, formless shapes that once resembled buildings and trees. Now, his house was a mere silhouette behind an unrelenting mask of darkness.

Instinctively, his legs began to move. This was a mistake, he repeated.

Cole's walk became an awkward, loping run. He felt partially immobile, as though the fog were impeding his motions. Too terrified to look back, he tried to sprint, his breaths choppy and inconsistent. Only forward, he insisted, his adrenaline barely surmounting the crushing weight of fog pressing down on his shoulders.

He was being chased—he knew it.

His house was a block away. Cole wheezed an audible gasp, reaching out his arms as though trying to pull his shadowy home closer.

Then something brushed his back.

Defensively, Cole reeled in a semicircle, nearly toppling over. When he looked back, his entire body froze, mouth agape. He blinked hard to clear his vision, but the horrifying scene remained true.

Looming only a step away, its dim glares radiating from a faintly illuminated bulb, was the streetlight.

He was back.

Cole spun around. Several blocks away—too many to count—stood his cloaked home. "No!" he berated himself. His hushed voice echoed through the billows of fog, ricocheting off invisible barriers and resonating in his ears like a repetitive tune: "No! No! No! No!"

The hairs on his arms stood up. A feeling of nervous uncertainty overwhelmed him.

He was being watched.

Hovering across the street was a pair of black, soulless eyes rimmed with white, glowing eyelids. A thin, hunched figure lurked idly behind its wall of fog. It breathed silently but visibly, its stomach expanding and contracting where uneven breaths endured. And it looked only at Cole.

The boy felt himself getting hot beneath his jacket, but he couldn't move. He listed to his own frightened breaths, the sound of his pitiable fear making his entire body shake. He wanted to cry and scream out, but he was too terrified to even blink.

Suddenly the creature unleashed an ear-piercing screech. It sounded far from natural, but rather like a mechanical, grating wail released from a broken-down machine. Like snapping sticks harmonized with rusty, clanking metal, melded together by the faint sound of an animalistic howl. Like an animal in pain.

Cole's anxiety turned his nervous breaths into desperate, heaving gasps. He backed away, his eyes still fixed on the bony, humanoid creature behind the veil of fog. But it was like they were attached by an invisible string: in synchronization, the creature took a hunched step forward, matching Cole's speed. It hobbling through the fog—just an ominous silhouette—making that horrible noise again.

Cole panicked. He shut his eyes, turned on his heels, and ran. This time, he vowed he would not look back.

Sprinting, he could hearthe rough, claw-like steps of the creature chasing him. It's movements sounded like steel ripping apart asphalt, getting closer each time he released a choked pant. It repeated that horrible noise like a death-call, louder each time until it sounded like a perpetual howl ringing in the boy's ears.

Miraculously, the mirage of his house began to take shape as he barreled through his front yard. He clambered up the stairs to the porch, tripping on the last step and scraping his knee. Without faltering, he picked himself up and tore open the front door, slamming it shut the instant he was safely inside. He expected to hear the rough clattering of the creature ramming against the door, but he heard nothing.

Cole stared into the blackness of the kitchen, his back plastered against the door. Without looking, he fiddled with the doorknob until he successfully turned the lock. Only then did he release a pent-up sigh, sliding his back down the door and crying into his hands as he plopped onto the kitchen tile.

What was that creature? What was happening? Why did the entire world go dark? These questions and many more plagued his curiosity like a rampant disease.

Wiping away the last of his tears, Cole noticed something shining through his half-blurred vision: a light was turned on upstairs. Judging by the intensity and angle of the light beams, he guessed it came from his bedroom. Somehow, he knew it came from his bedroom.

Cole crawled over to the stairs and began climbing them like a child—weak and out of breath, and on all fours. When his shaky legs stabilized, he stood up and ascended the staircase slowly, calling out as he reached the top step. "Dad?"

The boy staggered toward his bedroom, trailing his arms against the walls. "Dad?" he asked again, waiting intently for a response. He stopped at his doorway and peeked inside.

There was no one.

But his window had been closed. "H-hello?" His voice was timid. He walked carefully to the window, eyes downcast in nervous foreboding. His hands were shaking again; his bedroom was freezing.

Cole lifted his head an inch and peered outside. The streetlight had burnt out, blending into the rest of the black, abyssal world. His terrified breaths began to fog his window, redolent of entrapping fog from which he had narrowly escaped.

"Cole?"

The boy jumped at the sound of the familiar voice. He whirled around and saw his dad standing in the doorway. The man wore a look of genuine concern on his face. Almost symbolically, the room felt warmer, and Cole's fears began melting away.

"Oh, Dad!" Cole exclaimed. He breathed a therapeutic sigh of relief and laughed light-heartedly, mostly at himself. "Sorry…I think I just scared myself. Really, I'm fine now. Thank you for coming to see me." The blonde-haired boy gave his father a gentle, reassuring smile.

"Another nightmare again?" His father's voice was tranquil, almost angelic. Calming was the accurate word, Cole decided.

"Yeah…heh," the boy laughed, rubbing the back of his neck and glancing down to shield the sheepishness in his eyes. "I'm tired, anyway. Sorry I startled you."

"No, no! It's alright, son. I'm glad you're okay."

Cole looked up again and offered a half-hearted smile. "Thanks, Dad." He turned around and shuffled with his balled-up sheets and out-of-place pillow, solemnly realizing how much the nightmare must have spooked him. He turned back to his dad as he crawled into bed. "Goodnigh…t?" But his dad was already gone.

Normally, his edginess would grant him little shut-eye after a nightmare, extending to hours of nervous tossing and turning until only the weary grasp of insomnia could lull him to sleep. But tonight, his exhaustion prevailed and his fears were shelved. Cole yawned and rolled onto his side, realizing his light was still on. "Whatever," he muttered, dismissing the notion and lazily resting against the pillow. Slowly, he felt the deep tendrils of sleep grasp and overtake his consciousness.

"Cole…"

The boy jolted. He blinked open his eyes and lifted his head off the pillow. At his doorway, he saw no one. The light was turned off.

Cole's thumping heartbeat made him tremble, as though the beating were magnified and had spread to every inch of his body. He laid his head down and stared disconcertedly at the blank ceiling. His palms were sweaty and shaking, so he brought them close to his chest as an act of protection. Then he clutched his eyes shut, forcing himself to find the sleep he desperately needed.

"Cole…"

The voice sounded closer now—hauntingly indistinct but clear at the same time. Cole didn't open his eyes. His mother's intuitive words replayed in his mind like a recording without end: "what you can't see, doesn't exist."

"Cole!"

His eyes shot open. He stared at the ceiling, a cold breath of air on his neck. What you can't see, doesn't exist. What you can't see, doesn't exist. But somewhere beyond his mother's words, beyond his own capacitance for disbelief, beyond the principles by which he lived his life and, by extension, had a feeble understanding of the universe around him, he knew that it existed.

He turned his head.

Floating across from him on the other side of the bed was that pair of black, white-rimmed eyes. "Cole!" the humanoid creature wailed, extending a writhing, bony arm and grabbing at the boy's shoulders. Before he could scramble away, the creature had pulled him close. Cole screamed, his wails answered with a howling, murderous screech that bellowed from the monster's razor-toothed, red-blotted maw.

Cole smelled the scent of blood as his face scraped against the creature's sandpaper skin. It unhinged its jaw, revealing the soulless black hole that was its ever-hungry mouth. Cole tried to scream, but his voice was muted. He tried to push away, but his arms were numb. He wracked his clouded, hardly-functioning brain for some final insight—but he was left disappointed. He was going to die.

"Ahhhh! Ahh! Ahh…!"

Cole sprang up. He was in his bed, the last of his screams echoing off the walls as his body and mind adapted to this new, other-worldly scene. His blinked a few times, trying to adjust his eyes to the golden, glaring waterfall of sunlight that spilled through his bedroom window. His clock confirmed it was morning—much later than his normal waking hour.

Cole's heart was still thumping by the time his body relaxed. "Woah…" he muttered, rubbing his groggy eyes. That inexplicable sense of a watching, unseen presence was gone, but he knew better than to trust his fallible perceptions. Almost impulsively, he tore the sheets off his bed to verify that he was truly alone.

Cole breathed a long, remedial sigh of relief; there was no creature—just an empty space that looked surprisingly undisturbed. "Woah." This post-nightmare alleviation was something Cole had grown accustomed to. After sixteen years, it almost felt routine.

The boy hopped out of bed in unusually good spirits. The prospect of not being eaten alive was probably to thank for that.

Cole slipped off his pajama shorts and shirt, replacing them with a t-shirt and jeans, and lastly a pair of socks. It was a brutally warm summer day, but his bone-chilling nightmare had left him shivering in the real world, as well. He combed his short dirty-blonde hair for a brief second before recognizing the smell of his mother's cooking wafting from the kitchen to his bedroom. "Pancakes," he said under his breath, the word itself infusing him with immediate hunger.

Cole took the opportunity to analyze his dream as he made the short trip to his kitchen. Certain parts of his nightmare—like that horrible creature—felt disturbingly familiar. A reoccurring dream? He had read about that kind of thing somewhere—probably at the school library. They were supposedly prophetic, he recalled, or instilled a cryptic, profound message. But what message? A conveyance of death? Cole frowned, perturbed that he was clinging to supernatural premonitions for answers. Maybe, hopefully, the article he had read was just the rambling of a naive, gullible weirdo. Cole shrugged it off as he met his sister walking up the stairs.

"Hey Jade." He gave the black-haired girl a gentle smile.

She patted her brother playfully on the back as she passed him. "Hey sleepyhead, breakfast's ready. You're running late." She sounded cheery as usual, but Cole sensed a hint of trepidation in her voice.

"Late for…what?" he asked, genuinely confused. But as he watched her face grow pale and apprehensive, realization struck him. Like a pair of dying, unintelligible machines, the brother and sister fell despairingly quiet, devoid of life. "Oh…" was all Cole could mumble. And his good mood retracted, and with it the color from his face.

Jade bit her lower lip. "The reapings."

Author's Note: Please let me know what you think! In chapters to come I'll post "chapter questions" to help make reviewing more interesting, but for now I'm eager to see your tribute submissions!

Thankyou!

~PisuLuckee