Every story has a beginning and an end. When my story ends, what will remain of me?

What is an exile? Does it require a place, unsuitable for a comfortable life? Is it a process that could change a person forever?

I was surrounded by darkness. Not the comfortable darkness of the dreamland I had already gotten used to but something that seemed to be far more alien. I felt like I could still remember the blinding light after which this darkness came.

Was this darkness the exile I was sentenced to? The time went by rather slowly if it was moving at all. Everything seemed still and lifeless.

At some point I realized that I could feel my body. It was Sheep’s. The tongue was where it should be, uninjured. One of my pockets radiated light. Like a person tormented by thirst, I put one of my hands around the object that seemed to instill some kind of progress in this otherwise still world. It was the small stone I picked up in statues’ village of which existence I had almost forgotten, as it lay there all this time next to the clown’s card.

As I grabbed the stone, a ray of light seemed to pierce the darkness. Then another one and another. The world seemed to become a kaleidoscope of bright mesmerizing colors as a deafening clarion seemed to boom in my ears.

Everything calmed down. I could hear voices that initially seemed extremely distant, but with every passing second they appeared to be getting closer and closer. I could feel a solid ground beneath my feet.

I couldn’t maintain balance under the tumultuous change of my situation and was about to fall, but someone grasped my hand in theirs and prevented me from doing so.

I opened my eyes, the face of the person who was holding my hand immediately coming into view. Pale hair, face that betrayed no emotion and those eyes that told me more than her face ever could. I had seen her before. It was Fatalist.

When my legs became steady enough to support myself, Fatalist let go of my hand. She was immediately shoved aside by a fuming person who I would prefer not to see again. Hummingbird, an entity who supposedly took over Sheep’s friend’s body.

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“You thought you could simply get rid of me?” She savored my supposed despair. “On your knees!”

I didn’t feel a slightest urge to obey her command. Perhaps, the island's protection was still working on me or perhaps my will grew stronger? At the very least, indulging in such a possibility felt nice. Seeing my lack of reaction, Hummingbird seemed to become startled as she flinched away from me and retreated all the way to the distant corner where she then stayed motionless, if you don’t take into consideration small shivering.

“It seems like you might want to become more flexible, Controller,” I heard another familiar voice. I turned around to notice Seer Andrew who seemed to be eerily happy, “Being a one-trick pony might hurt you real bad one day.”

There was only one person I haven’t met before in this little gathering. A gaunt young man, who was watching me vigilantly, spat, “He has the stone.”

“You mean we can’t escape then?” seer Andrew became even more cheerful. “Is our new friend a master of dismantling portals then?”

The young man didn’t answer, which caused a grin to appear on Andrew’s face, “So you put the heart of the portal on the ground waiting for someone to pick it up, right Wanderer?”

“It was supposed to be an abandoned village, for God’s sake!” a young man whose nickname appeared to be Wanderer cried.

Seer Andrew didn’t argue. Instead he went towards me and offered a handshake, “Name’s Andrew, though I go by Seer around those parts. Welcome to the team.”

Then he added, this time addressing everyone, “Then if we can’t escape, our only choice is to continue onward. Let’s go. Time waits for no one.”

Wanderer winced. “There must be another way.”

Andrew raised his brows. “Such as? If you mean the newcomer, he is lucky enough to escape here from wherever he could have been,” and without waiting for a reply he went further down the plain corridor we were in. I felt a light chill overcoming me. Seer Andrew most likely had already talked to me in the future I was not aware of. I needed to be more careful when interacting with him.

The others followed. Even Hummingbird who seemed to be still shaken after talking to me. The most amusing part was that I didn’t even do anything yet and still she looked at me like I murdered her favorite dog.

I sidled t

owards Andrew. Seer or not, he seemed to be the most talkative of the bunch and if spending time with him meant answers, I was willing to do that.

“So what kind of situation are we in?” I asked Andrew.

“This can be called a challenge of sorts. A pretty deadly place. What I need to mention however is that you don’t need to mind others. They are usually a nicer bunch but things happened. They got too used to being, well, untouched by death and now that their lives are on the line, some started to panic.”

I waited for Andrew to continue but he was watching Hummingbird silently. The latter was going next to Fatalist ahead of us. Was there something wrong? Just like Andrew, I watched the duo as they went down a particularly dimly lit section of this seemingly endless corridor.

The next moment Hummingbird stopped as if she had noticed something. Fatalist pushed the girl, and she fell forward on something evidently soft, as could be judged by the sound. The next moment I could see an indistinct movement and a bloodcurdling scream made me freeze in my tracks.

“Come,” seer Andrew said, noticing that I had stopped. “We still have a long way to go.”