In the northern reaches of the Lesser Peninsula spanned a lake. The arms of winter wrapped around it, a cold embrace of snow capped pines and frost-bitten grass. A white sky was tempered with greying clouds, blurring the flocking birds that glided past an utterly lonesome tower, a single black domino left standing in the pure landscape.
The structure dwarfed all that surrounded it, imbued with an unnatural texture that seemed to grow dark and distorted the longer one looked at it. Shaped like a splinter, the tower stretched into the sky, disappearing amidst the snow-dusted clouds. Strange people scuttled about its base, slipping in and out of a single entrance. They wore sandy linen wraps and beaten bronze armour, and their skin was bronzed as if they spent each day under a harsh desert sun. Without fail each wore a weapon on their being, and often carried little else.
Inside, bustling bodies warmed the air, infusing the stillness of the tower with life. Many seemed uneasy, as the interior seemed to pride itself on being uninviting as the exterior. Roughly cut grey stone bricks had been stacked regimentally to form every surface, only broken by mossy timber beams that spewed forth from the ground, plunging into the ceiling above. Distorted screeches rung out against the stone as blades protested against grind wheels. Flurried movements charged the room with rapidity, everyone absorbed in their own task. All of the activity was centred around a monolithic staircase that led upwards into a murky black, ominously empty amid the crowding army that had gathered around it.
Two individuals overlooked it all from behind a thick pane of glass that brought deafening silence to their little secluded room. One was a pale boy, who apathetically leant against the glass, watching two bickering warriors from afar. His black hair parted neatly, revealing a slender face that seemed disinterested in the scene before him, and yet his eyes betrayed his calculating demeanour. A girl, who looked much similar to the others gathered inside the tower, teetered end the edge of a wooden chair, trying to balance with her toes against the table before her. She looked wild, in a beautiful way. Striking blonde hair separated her from the other warriors, falling in droves down to her shoulders, framing a royal face. She certainly could have been mistaken for royalty, with the way she turned her nose up at the proceedings.
"Surely you can't be serious, Nico." She scoffed, "These are the best you could pull together? There can't be more than two Renders here, and we both know that almost all the Tenders will just be cannon-fodder, even on the first floor."
"Three, actually." Asked Nico, glancing towards her swaying dismissively at the table.
"Huh?" She certainly didn't have royal manners, evidently.
"There's three Renders this time around."
The girl looked closely out the window with renewed interest.
"There's spiky-hair, who obviously has some kind of power. Not that he's earned it." She scoffed, pointing accusingly at a boy with a gathering of others listening intently to him. He seemed to be basking in the attention, and she had no doubt that he was boasting about his combat prowess.
"That's Jason. He woke up with the last batch. Apparently he cleaned up the first floor on his own as a dare after someone told him that he was full of it, and lucked out by finding a Catalyst before dying." Nico said as he gazed at the boy.
"Dumb and lucky, gotcha." She peered out at the rest, searching for someone who stood out. "Any idea what his power is?"
"Fire, I think. Despite his personality, he hasn't shown it off."
"Clearly not a complete moron then."
That moment a thin streak of lightning ripped across the room, making a few people yelp in the process. They glared at a girl in the corner, who had seemed to be concentrating intensely on something for quite a while until the incident. She smiled awkwardly, waving at the people she had almost fried.
"Lightning!? I've heard of her. Claire right? She hasn't been in the tower yet?"
"No," Said Nico. "Speaking of morons… She came from a rich family back on Earth, and she got pampered to bits. I'll be surprised if she's any use in a fight."
"Still… Lightning would be nice…" She murmured.
The blonde girl scanned again for a few minutes, her face contorting as she gradually became visibly frustrated.
"Fine! Who's the third?"
Nico sniggered.
"The great Cindy Crown is asking for my help? Maybe I should reassess my lowly compensation since I'm being so overworked by you." He rubbed his chin greedily.
Cindy rolled her eyes. "Just tell me, moron."
"Fine. The dark haired boy with the white-steel blade. I've had reliable sources tell me that he's a known Render, but I haven't found out how he got his hands on a Catalyst. I've got people watching him, just in case he turns out to be an Othersider… But I doubt it."
Cindy watched the boy as he sharpened his knife. Sparks spattered off his forehead as he pressed his dagger against the grindstone, seemingly focused on his task. He wasn't half bad looking, she thought - for a Render, anyway. A shiver crept up Cindy's spine as she watched him, as if someone was breathing over her shoulder. Scanning the room quickly, she shuddered and looked back at the boy.
"What's his name?"
"No one knows his real name, but people call him Light."
Two weeks prior.
"No, no, no… Argggghh! Idiot!"
Aris stumbled out of bed, his eyes bulging at the clock. He'd managed to sleep through thirty minutes of blaring alarms, on today of all days. Ripping clothes out of his cupboard, he tossed up the chances of getting fired before he could even start the interview. Scrambling into the hallway as he pulled a jacket over an untucked shirt, he tussled with the door as he sped out into the street.
Work wasn't hard to come by these days. People had been disappearing left and right for the better part of a year now, which tends to open up a lot of opportunities. A fact that had almost become normal, at least for Aris. But job opportunities at EVA were scarcer than gold.
His mother had disappeared near the beginning. No one knew what had happened to her, since it had still been early days during the Split. His father had vanished many years before that, but from what he knew of him, Aris highly doubted that some world-scale catastrophe had caused him to bail.
It had begun with a small scale disappearance, like you might see in the news about a missing person in your local neighbourhood . Nothing too dramatic, nothing too weird. Nothing that would turn your head. But then it really started. Most governments around the world tried to cover it up, but the truth was bound to come out eventually. The scale was just too enormous. Everyone suspected that there was some new form of weaponry that was being used against civilians, but no country seemed to be spared the effects, leaving no one to blame. Hundreds of thousands vanished every week. Assumed dead, but there was never a body to confirm it, hence why everyone started calling it the Split.
And people went ballistic. The invisible threat of instant death, without discrimination, hanging over the whole world's head didn't make for reasonable individuals. Many countries had to implement martial law to control the riots, and those who didn't fell into ruin.
A video was eventually released that had captured the moment of someone disappearing. Initially everyone thought it was a hoax, as did Aris, until it was verified by EVA. They were an international agency that had been formed to investigate the disappearances, hence the 'Emergency Enquiry into Vanishing Anomaly', nicknamed EVA by the general populace.
It featured a prisoner who had been recorded during his parole hearing, there one minute, and next, poof. No more prisoner. But what really got people's attention was the briefest glimmer that the camera had picked up. For only a single frame, an inexplicable scene spread out upon the air, like a distorted painting splashed across the air without the need for a canvas. It wasn't easy to make out what was depicted, but it looked somewhat familiar; muddled greens and blues made out a vibrant landscape, with cool white clouds scattered above. But a looming black line struck the image in two. No one knew what it was for certain, but nothing like it existed on Earth, that was for sure.
It was all ancient history to Aris. Without a guardian, although he had been on the cusp of adulthood, he should normally have been placed under someone's care until he came of age. Yet it turned out that orphans took a back seat to a global incident, so he had been left to fend for himself. As it happens, that suited Aris just fine. He was set on discovering all the information he could about the disappearances in order to find his mother. Which turned out to be very little, unhelped by the fact that his list of current resources started at the backpack that he lived out of, and ended with what he had between his ears.
But working at EVA, that would gain him some real progress. Access to records, restricted files, you name it. He'd had to pretend to be some brown-nose punk to get an interview, since they allegedly only hired the 'elite', as they'd put it. It hadn't been hard to alter his academic records; there had been a professor who had a soft spot for students whose family had vanished, and had made it known to those students that certain… considerations could be arranged because of their situation. It had only taken a bit of prodding for him to revise his results to near perfect scores.
Aris blitzed down the street, hyper-aware of the time. He was thanking his lucky stars that his stamina had grown so much in the last year from exploring around the city. This interview would be the final hurdle in his plan. There had to be something on his mother there. He was sure of it.
As he turned the corner past a row of boarded-up businesses, he caught sight of the EVA building. It was enormous, clad with seamless windows from bottom to top. It stood foreboding against the city skyline, as if keeping the others buildings in check as it watched over its domain.
Without time to take in the sights, Aris slipped past two guards laughing together at the entrance. They glanced at him as he ran in, before shrugging and continuing with their banter.
"Clearly EVA doesn't pay these fools as well as they need to, if they didn't even check on some random guy sprinting into the lobby." He thought.
Taking a moment to compose himself, Aris took in his surroundings. There wasn't anything special about the foyer, bar the oddly metallic flair that the decorator had decided to take with the space. A minimalist brushed steel clock hung centred above a small waiting area.
"Two minutes late. Please, please don't be a hair-splitting prick."
He approached the young lady poised gracefully at the welcome desk. She looked up from her computer, dark red hair swept up into a formal bun that bobbed around as she moved.
He smiled gracefully. "Aris Carlton, I'm here for an interview." He claimed with as much formality as he could muster.
She smiled back slyly.
"A bit late, don't you think? Someone was just down to escort the other applicants to the second floor. Maybe show up on time, and then you might get let past the front desk." She looked away, as if her business was finished with him.
Aris' smile froze in place, as he tried not to let his building rage seep out.
"Well now, I'm certain that it's only just eight o'clock now. See here." He pulled his sleeve up to reveal a very expensive looking watch. He saw her demeanour change slightly as she reassessed someone she had thought was another small-time runt trying to make it big.
"Well… I suppose I can check your file. I can probably squeeze you upstairs now, and tell the interviewer that there was an admin error in the system." She said, clicking away behind her desk, glancing up at him with renewed interest.
"Thank you, I would appreciate that greatly." Said Aris, his smile growing even wider. He had gone to great lengths to perfect a look that could get him further than his regular status would. The white-collared suit and the slicked back hair had done all that he had bargained for and then some.
"It's a shame that the watch is a knock-off from O'Malleys. Maybe once I do some digging on info around here, I can treat myself to the real deal. Whatever. As long as redhead here believes that I'm worth letting in. Then it's only the interview that I'll have to worry about."
"The chairman!" The lady yelped, startling Aris.
"Um… excuse me?" He puzzled.
"It says here that you're meeting the chairman for your interview." She yapped, as if she couldn't keep her jaw closed.
"Well we certainly wouldn't want to keep him waiting then, would we." He prompted politely. On the surface he was cool and collocted, but underneath panic started to bubble. This was unplanned. Had he pushed his grades too high? Maybe they were at an unbelievable level, and they were going to expose him for fraud. No, but why the chairman in that case. Maybe he had just made that much of an impression. He tried to keep a straight face as a grizzled man in a grey suit escorted him to the elevator. The man swiped a keycard and pressed a level far below ground.
"I thought that the interviews were being held on level two?" Quizzed Aris, looking at the man.
"Chairman Crane requires special protection." His voice sounded like gravel. "Save the questions for the interview, kid." He snapped as Aris went to open his mouth. Clamping it, he noticed a polished black gun in a shoulder holster, hidden under the man's jacket. His mouth went dry. Something seemed off, not just with this man, but the whole situation. At the very least he felt out of his depth. Reaching their floor, the man led him off down a grey hallway, lit by harsh fluorescents every couple of steps, before coming to a stop outside a small room. The man motioned for Aris to proceed. He peered his head in. The room was barren, with only a small table and chair, with strange looking speakerphones in each corner of the room, and a large mirror on one wall.
"I don't think this is the right room." Insisted Aris.
"Chairman Crane will be with you shortly. Take a seat."
Aris looked between him and the room, before sighing and heading in. He figured that even if they had discovered his fraudulent application, there wasn't any real risk of repercussions past a slap on the wrist. He could probably take the old man in a scuffle and make a break for the elevator, but the gun had put a pin in that plan. So he resigned himself to whatever he had coming for him.
Sitting down in the chair, the door clicked behind him, leaving Aris alone in the dimly lit room.
All of a sudden the mirror turned transparent, and a face that Aris knew well the face that was looking back at him. Chairman Crane, the brilliant, and not to mention wealthy genius of the Crane family who had led the investigation into the Split for the last year. He looked older in person, as if the days had worn him long and thin. He gave a weary smile.
"Good morning, Mr Carlton. I would apologise for the lack of warning for this meeting, but it seems that you were running later than we expected." He smiled warmly, easing the tension between them somewhat.
"If you'll excuse me, Chairman, might I ask why you wanted to see me?" Asked Aris, unwilling to give any quarter until he was sure that they were aware of his actions.
"Well, I suppose I felt like I owed you an explanation about what is to come. Let me start by giving you a little glimmer into our history that you may not know. EVA has somewhat of a rocky reputation, because of our lack of progress in the past year. But what do you really expect, given the circumstances? We were only put together as a scapegoat for the government for when humanities efforts were to inevitably and utterly fail."
He seemed to be enjoying this recount, as if it were some grand tale. Aris found himself looking at what he had thought were speakers in the room, but as he observed them, the less ordinary they seemed.
"But. There is always a silver lining that men like I can grasp to wrench victory from any situation. That is what separates me from them. I will do what is necessary to succeed, which shall end up being the miscalculation that brings their downfall. It just so happens that you fit into that puzzle, Aris." He looked through the glass, squinting slightly.
"Well," Started Aris, "I think that I've had enough of-"
"Not so fast, boy." Warned the Chairman as Aris stood. "You think we didn't know about your little endeavour to infiltrate this organisation? I don't know whether to applaud you for your efforts or laugh at your stupidity in believing that it would work."
"I-"
"And yet, as luck would have it, we would like to employ your services on this occasion, Mr Carlton."
Aris glared cautiously at the old man before him. Nothing here felt normal, and everything that he heard only packed on more doubt and confusion.
"How would you like to meet your mother?" The chairman asked, his eyes glinting.
Aris bolted upright. "She's already gone!"
The Chairman grinned.
"Well, to be honest, I wasn't really asking your permission. You see, we've found a way to cause the Split to occur at will. The first step to cure the disease is to know what causes it, right? Only problem is, we need to do some human trials, which as I'm sure you can guess, wouldn't go down too well at a tribunal. But who would care if some mutt off the street was never seen again? Nothing personal, Aris."
Aris grimaced, scanning the room for an escape. This was far worse than anything he could have imagined would happen, coming here. He jumped up, running to try the door. No good.
"Ready to make history, Aris?" The Chairman chuckled with glee, turning to mumble a word to one of his attendants, who nodded and moved aside to a control panel. "Who knows, maybe we'll bring you back someday. Or not." The pane flicked back to the mirrored image.
Aris launched himself at the screen, slamming his fist into it repeatedly until blood trickled down his knuckles, but it remained unyielding. The machines in the room began to hum in concert with one another, as if spurred on by the steady thumping of Aris' fist against the glass.
As if from a memory, the air in the centre of the room rippled, a stroke of green and blue and black. Aris knew what it was as soon as he saw it.
As the noise crescendoed, he sunk back against the wall, trying to get as far away from the image as possible. Even if his mother was there, he didn't want to be stuck wherever that was. He'd only wanted to bring her back.
Suddenly the picture seemed to skew, suddenly, like someone was switching channels on an old television. Blackness leaked into the landscape until nothing was left.
"Why didn't I just sleep in…"
And with that thought, the black seeped over him until it enveloped both his body and mind.
A mechanical voice rang out against the darkness.
"Welcome, Last Light. Trigger criteria met. Entrance conditions for the Stairhouse are now exclusive.
The currently selected pool of participants shall be the final initiated. No further additions shall be made. As first and last to enter of his own volition without being selected, you have been granted a special skill."
The voice seemed to hesitate, before adding with a sliver of sarcasm, "Good luck."