I need to get out of here, Max Mercier thought to himself. Unfortunately, that was the easy part. Getting out of the house, leaving everything behind; his family, his friends, his life… all of them were his. That was the hard part.

He didn’t blame anybody. Mostly because there was nobody to blame, and mostly because he didn’t have the courage. Maybe that's why his brother, Marvin, had left in the first place. All those years ago, when his brother left and didn’t come back, he was sure that must’ve been why.

He was sickened, Max thought. This life was sickening.

When Max had vanished from the traces of his room and out of his house, wearing his favourite light-yellow running shoes and a pair of headphones slung around his neck, he was sure he wasn’t coming back.

He had to contend with something important. Something that no one else could tell him, only himself. Perhaps that was when he knew that no one else could possibly save him.

As Max ran past the nearby vending store, passing by the old-bend river, the old treehouse which he can see from his home, he was prepared. But being prepared wasn’t enough.

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Being prepared was having every box ticked, having every illustration for every path that you had dreamt of drawn. Max had none of that. He had a belief. Rather, a system of belief. And in that system of belief, there was a lie. A lie that he had told himself repeatedly, throughout most of his years and now seemingly catching up to him. A lie so big, that he believed in it.

He was wrong. The lie was the truth.

And the truth is that he will never be good enough.

That was when the tears dripped along the cobblestone roads.

Max ran with all his might, everything that it took. He was running for the shadows and from them, for the future and from them, for the past and from them.

But he knew one thing was for sure: whatever he was, that was not it.

Still, how can this be?

As Max reached the silver gate that lead out into the woods of his town, he continued to trudge through it. His footsteps were light, no longer heavy, and there was a momentum and rhythm to it. It was like he had caught on fire, and using it as a torch to finally give him everything he needed to leave.

That was it. All it needed for him to break.

Max raced toward the silver gate. As he ran along the forests, the shrubbery and the dark shadows of trees that lined up around him, his feet hit a gentle rock.

And in that split of a moment, Max flew forward, his eyes barely able to contain what he saw, and fell into the dirt right up ahead. His vision snapped.

There was silence. Until a voice spoke.

"Don’t wake him like that! You’ll snap apart the bond!"