I don’t remember exactly what I was doing. I think I was playing hide and seek with the other kids.

We had just finished a round and were about to start another one.

“Fey!”

Out of nowhere, Fey’s dad came running towards us.

“Dad?” she asked, looking confused. “What are you doing here? Is work over already?”

He scooped her into her arms. “Shhhh. It’s okay. I’ll tell you at home. Everything’s going to be okay.”

He took her way and other adults started showing up as well, and taking their kids away.

We didn’t know what was happening, but from their faces you could tell that something had. Something very, very wrong.

“Nar!”

“Dad!” I shouted.

I ran to him and he took me into his arms. He hugged me tightly. So tightly. Like he was making sure I wasn’t going anywhere.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Nothing. Nothing’s wrong,” he said.

But I heard the tremor in his voice. I saw the paleness in his face, and I knew he was lying.

He started walking, carrying me away, and refused to tell me anything until we got home.

Everywhere we went, there were people running. They were grabbing their kids. They were carrying food. And they all looked like my dad.

I started to feel scared. I probably cried.

I remember my dad patting my back and making hushing sounds at me, gently rocking me in his arms as he took me home.

“Nar!” my mom shouted, as we came in.

“Mom!”

My dad passed me into her arms.

“I’m scared! What’s happening?”

“Shhh, it will be okay. Alright?”

Just then, my uncle, my dad’s younger half-brother, came in. His arms were full of food, more than I’d ever seen.

“It’s insane out there!” he said, as my dad rushed to help him. “The queues are getting massive! I even saw a fight!”

“Who’s fighting? Why?” I asked.

My uncle looked at me, startled, unsure of what to say.

“Where's mom and dad?” my dad asked his brother instead.

“They decided to stay. They are waiting for you two, so you can walk back together. I… I don’t know what’s going to happen. You should hurry!”

My mom nodded against my head. “Okay… Okay. “

My mom sat me down on a stool and held my hands. “Something’s happened, Nar. But we don’t have time to explain. Mom and dad need to get food for us, okay? We need you to be strong now, and stay with your uncle. Behave, okay? We’ll talk about this later. Okay?”

“O-Okay!” I said, even as I could feel the tears running down my face.

“I-I can tell him,” my uncle volunteered.

“No! We’ll tell him,” my dad said. “Come on, Lan. We need to hurry!”

“Be brave! We’ll be back soon, okay?” my mom promised me.

They both ran out the door and I was left with my uncle.

He was seventeen at the time. My grandma had died very early, and my grandpa had gotten together with another woman, one whose husband had also died young, and she had had no kids with him. I considered her my own grandma.

My uncle came closer to the table and stared at the food. His lips moved as he silently counted how much jell-o and crackers there were.

“It’s a lot of food…” I said.

He was startled and looked at me. Then he smiled. “Yes, more than enough.”

“Enough for what?”

“Oh… I… Let’s just wait for your parents to come back, okay? Your dad wants to be the one to explain it to you.”

Just then, I heard shouts from outside and my uncle dashed to the door.

“No! Stay there!” he told me, when I tried to join him and see what was happening.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Nothing. Nothing’s wrong. Someone tripped and fell down the steps. They’re fine though. They’re fine…”

He looked back at me, and his face was scary. Not because I was scared of him, but because there was something in it that scared me. Years later, I would understand that he was terrified. He was alone with me, responsible for taking care of me while everything collapsed around him.

But I didn’t know that yet. I knew nothing then.

My parents and grandparents came back hours later, looking battered. My mom and grandma carried the food, and my dad and grandpa lingered by the door and by the windows, staring outside.

My mom and grandma dropped their haul on the table, joining my uncle’s earlier one.

“It’s good. It’s good,” my grandma said. “This will do us for a while.”

“Mom?” I asked, feeling tears coming again.

My mom came over and hugged me tightly. She kissed my forehead and tousled my hair.

“Can you tell me what's going on?” I asked her.

She nodded, biting her lip, and squeezed my shoulders. She stood up and pulled a chair to sit down next to me.

“Well, hmmm. You know that everyone works, right?” she asked me.

I nodded. Of course I did. Who wouldn’t know?

“So, there are people that work in the pile. People that work in delivering the aetherium to the factories, and people that work in the factories. Right?”

I nodded again, unsure of where she was going with this.

“So, well, this hasn’t happened in a long time. A very long time ago. Way before you were born. Before I was born, or even grandpa and his dad. So long a time…”

“Okay. And what happened?” I asked, getting impatient in my fear. Why didn’t she just tell me?

“So, just like then, something bad came down with the trash this season. It… Well, it makes people sick.”

I gasped. “Are you sick?”

She held my face tightly. “I’m not! You hear me? I’m fine. Everyone here’s fine. But there are some people that live around us that are sick. So we all need to stay home for a while, okay? You can’t go outside, but mom will play with you. It will be fun!”

Outside, the sounds of people and conversations had gotten louder and louder, and I stared at the door when shouting broke outside.

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“I can’t believe they waited for shift’s end to tell us,” my dad said.

My uncle had joined him and my grandpa, and the three of them stood by the door. Almost as if they were trying to block it.

“Probably wanted to confirm?” my uncle asked.

“Doubt it,” said my grandpa. “They just didn’t want to affect the quota too much.”

Screams suddenly pierced the hubbub of conversations, and shouts quickly followed it. Loud and angry.

“What are they doing?” my uncle asked.

“Crystal have Mercy… We need to put a stop to that. You stay! Watch the others!”

“Okay!” my uncle replied.

“Lan, take Nar inside,” my dad asked, looking at the two of us.

I remember thinking that he looked sad, but then my mom dragged me inside and he and my grandpa were gone.

I never knew what they went out to do, and when they came back, they didn’t tell anyone while I was around. But they sat by the door and windows, quiet, looking outside. In the crystalight, their faces were full of deep shadows.

The first week went by.

Rumors started coming in, from the neighbors.

People were getting sick. Really, really sick.

It was something horrendous, they said in whispers they thought I couldn’t hear, but which made all the adults go quiet and pray for the Crystal’s mercy.

We prayed a lot then, and sang praises to the Crystal all of us. My mom made me pray too, to keep our family safe, but mostly, she asked for the Crystal’s forgiveness. Over and over, she said she was sorry and begged the Crystal to forgive them.

“Why do you keep saying that?” I asked her one night, after our prayers.

“Say what?”

“For the Crystal to forgive us. Did we do something bad? Did I do it?”

“No! No! Of course not. It wasn’t you. You’ve done nothing wrong. Don’t worry about it, okay?”

But even as she said that, she continued praying for forgiveness.

At the start of the second week, my grandparents started to feel ill. They quickly got so weak they couldn’t even get out of bed. They could barely even eat. I was forbidden from going into their room. My dad alone went in to check in on them, and he started sleeping in the living room after that, taking turns guarding the door with my uncle.

It was hard to sleep at night. My grandparents were in pain. A lot of pain. I cried a lot, and so did my mom.

A few days later, my mom fell. She was up one moment, playing with me, and then she just dropped. I screamed and my dad came running in.

He lifted her up and carried her to the bed.

He shouted at me to leave the room. He called for my uncle and he came running in to drag me away. I fought him. I scream and kicked and bit. I didn’t want to go. I wanted to check on my mum. See if she was alright.

That sweaty, messy haired, pale face was the last proper glimpse I had of her.

And a week later, my dad was sick too.

My uncle did his best to ration the food, prioritizing the sick people. They needed it more than us, to fight the disease. But there just wasn’t enough food for all of us. A worker’s stipend lasts a week, and we were all well into our second week by now.

Eventually we ran out.

Two days later I heard a pop.

That’s the best way I can describe it, as that was exactly what I heard. A pop. And then a second one, right after, and then a strange sound. Like when you drop jell-o on the floor. That kind of sound.

My uncle ran into my grandparent’s room and screamed. I didn’t even know an adult could scream like that.

My mom and dad, weak as they were, shouted from the room. Asking him what was going on?

My uncle puked against the wall and started crying and I got up to go see what had happened.

“No! Stay there, Nar! Don’t come here!” he shouted.

“What’s happening?” my dad asked.

“Is everything okay? Is Nar okay?” my mom asked.

“Nar, stay there!” my uncle shouted again, and he slid down to the floor, weeping.

“What’s happening?” My dad asked again.

I heard sounds from the room and then I saw something peeking out through the door.

I think I screamed.

I barely recognized him. His skin was stained yellow, and his face was all wrong, all bloated. When he noticed me staring, he looked at me, and hid away. His cheeks were so big though, and they jiggled like… Like I can’t even describe.

Later on, I learned that my grandparents had just died.

And my dad looked like that.

I was forbidden, again, from going to see them.

My mum and dad talked to me through the door, with me not looking, while my uncle went out in search of food.

When he returned, he was empty handed.

“The dispenser won’t give me anything,” he told my parents. “And nobody else has food. It’s not looking good out there. I heard some people were gathering, planning to go to the others at shift change, and ask for food. I think I’ll go too.”

“That’s good,” my dad said, his voice weak.

“Take Nar,” my mum told him. “Maybe they’ll have mercy if they see children. They have to. They have to…”

My uncle took my hand. “Come on. Let’s go see if we can find some food, okay?”

“Be careful and do what your uncle says!” my mom told me. “Be a good boy, okay Nar?”

“I will!” I promised.

When we stepped outside, it was like a whole other place. The neighborhood was quiet. There were no kids running outside, no adults seated around to chat, no love-struck teenagers chatting bashfully through windows. There was nobody.

My uncle tugged at my hand, and guided me through streets that had only two weeks ago been familiar, but which now I felt I was walking through for the first time in my life.

Here and there, we saw faces poking out of doors and windows. A woman hissed at us, told us to stay away from her house. My uncle pulled me in closer and we carried on.

Eventually we heard the noise. Voices. Shouting.

We turned around a house and we found a crowd of people.

“Go back to your homes!” a voice was saying. “The Admin and the Priest both have spoken. This is divine punishment! Go back!”

“We have kids here!” someone shouted. “How can you be like this?”

“The kids are sinners too!”

My uncle lifted me up onto his arms and pushed us in, deeper into the crowd.

“My kids have done nothing wrong!”

“This is not the Crystal! This is you! You are the sinners!”

“Cowards!”

“Go away, Unclean! Return to your homes and wait for your punishment!”

My uncle brought me close to his face.

“I can’t see anything,” he told me. “I’m going to put you on my shoulders. You tell me what you see!”

He hoisted me up and I was able to see over the heads of the gathered crowd.

Around me, there were many other kids up on people’s shoulders. Some of them were crying, but most were just staring, scared and hungry.

“There’s a man speaking,” I told my uncle. “There are a lot of people with him. They have… They have bits of aetherium in their hands. Why did they bring it here, uncle?”

Under me, my uncle didn’t reply. He simply swore under his breath.

“This is your last warning!” the same man said, waving his sharp piece of aetherium around. “Go back! Don’t make us do it for you!”

A man at the front of the crowd spat at him. “You will never join the Crystal, sinner! You doom us all to die! The Crystal is watching today!”

The man with the aetherium took a step back, like he had been struck.

“Bla-Blasphemy! Disobedience! You talk back against the Admin and the Priest? Against the Holy Crystal Itself? You deserve to die! Push them back! Push them!”

Nobody moved and he looked behind him. “What are you doing! Do you want to call the Crystal’s wrath on the rest of us? Show It that we’re not the same as them!”

That finally got a reaction. The people with the aetherium stepped forward, and they began to hit our people.

“Stop! There’re kids here! For the love of the Crystal!”

I couldn’t make sense of what I was seeing. The aetherium rose and fell. People went down. Blood was everywhere.

My uncle turned around, trying to get us out.

“Curse you! Curse you to the Eternal Darkness!” someone shouted from our side.

But we hadn't gone too far in, and the people at the back were fleeing.

Once there was some room around us, my uncle pulled me down to his arms and ran away, carrying me all the way home. People looked out from their homes as we dashed past, but my uncle never stopped to answer their desperate questions and pleas. He never said anything. I’m pretty sure he was crying.

When we got there, and he had told my parents what had happened, there was a long moment of silence.

“Curse them all to the darkness,” my mom whispered. “How could they? How could they!”

From then on, nobody told me to pray anymore. My mom sang no more. Nobody did.

The loudest thing in our home was my and my uncle’s stomachs growling for food. That and my parent’s soft moans of pain and crying.

To hear their pain from what used to be our room. To be forbidden from seeing them. From being next to them. I cried and cried, and I begged my uncle to let me see them, but he didn’t let me. He cried as he held me, keeping me from their room.

From inside, my parents too, begged me not to come in.

I… I hated the Crystal then. I hated It for what it was doing to me. To my family.

The stench of my dead grandparents was everywhere. And my parents cried in pain at all shifts. Not one night did I go to sleep or wake up, without the first thing I heard being the sound of their pain.

A couple days later, we had a visitor. A man was calling out from the streets.

“Hello?” my uncle said, from the door.

“Oh! Thank the Crystal!”

A man came to the door. He was an altei.

He grabbed my uncle’s hands and cried.

“Please! My daughter and my wife! I need food! Please! I’ll do anything!”

My uncle stumbled back. This was a grown altei, much taller and stronger than him, and I got scared of him.

“I-I’m sorry. We have nothing left! We have sick people too!”

The altei stopped mid-crying.

“Nothing? Nothing at… All?”

“We don’t. There’s nothing!” my uncle said, motioning towards the house. “It’s all gone. We haven’t eaten in a week!”

The man let go of my uncle. He leaned against the doorway and looked down. He looked lost, with silent tears running down his face.

“I’m sorry. We have nothing,” my uncle said, touching his shoulder.

But he shouldn’t have done that. The man suddenly turned and pushed him inside.

“Liar! I know you have it! Give it to me!”

I screamed as they fought. From the room, I heard my dad shouting and coughing, too weak to get up to protect me and his brother.

“Give! It! To! Me!” the man shouted.

He was beating my uncle so easily. Punching him with his massive hands. My uncle couldn't even speak.

I remember running towards the guy and holding onto his leg.

“Stop! Stop! We don’t have anything!”

The man dropped my uncle and lifted me up instead, raising a fist to hit me.

At the last second, he stopped. He looked at me, crying, high up in the air.

“Do you really have nothing?” he asked me.

“No… There’s nothing. Nothing for my mum and dad!” I said through the tears. “There’s nothing for them to eat!”

The man looked shocked. He looked from me to my uncle, coughing and gasping on the floor.

“I’m sorry… I’m sorry.”

He dropped me down on the floor and walked away. We never saw him again. But the damage was done. My uncle was hurt badly. The man had broken things and my uncle could barely breathe and move.

But still, he held me, and he pulled me closer to him.

“You need to go find food!” he told me the next day. “Your parents need it and so do you!”

I nodded at him.

“I don’t want to send you, but I have no choice,” he said, looking in the direction of my parents’ room.

It was strangely quiet that shift, especially after what had just happened the shift before.

“Go!” he told me. “I’ll look after them. Go on! But be careful!”

I ran out of the house.