A yew tree stands alone between death and life. A symbol of change. A symbol of eternity. It is alone, rotting, and old. It is a thousand strong, flourishing, and filled with the energy of youth. Its roots are like a warm hearth on the coldest night. Its fruit is the poison that bleeds the world. It deems you a friend.

Walk between life and death and know both.

A pause. The words made Sunday happy for some reason. Like the world come spring, something blossomed in his soul and body. He felt a change.

More words followed shortly after.

Whispers spread and displeasure rises. A gift many would rather stay forgotten was given to a wretch. Countless have suffered under it. And it is not easily forgotten.

The Young Master waves a hand and drinks from his wine cup. There is displeasure, but none decide to try and deny the gift he has freely given. The murmurs die down. None dare speak up, he thinks. It is maybe so, for his arrogance is earned trifold… And he’s not the only one breaking the order of things.

Another moment of silence came, like a snowfall in the middle of spring. Sunday grit his teeth and tries to hold on for the next words. Each syllable was like a chime of a myriad of bells, and each note carved his soul like it was the work of a divine artist. He was changing. No. He was being changed. It was not unpleasant and it distracted him from the crushing madness all around.

Was he being blessed or cursed? Was he a toy for gods or madmen? The voice turned playful, childish.

Someone speaks up. There is hesitation. Uncertainty. What did they sound like? Where did they go? Left on a thundercloud, they say? Tamed the earth and disappeared in its embrace? Or do they still lurk, living in the words of people?

The great deceivers live in history, in tales, in words. Be they heroes of unimaginable honor, or villains bringing forth darkness.

Fighter of giants, thief of hearts, grand are your tales, tall are your deeds. And there is power in stories. There is power in words.

The words ended and again, something shifted inside of Sunday.

The pause that followed was not like the others. There was a second type of tension added above the first. Looming like a threat of violence. Like the inevitable eruption of a dormant volcano. Like the silence before a trigger pull.

It didn’t make sense. Nothing did.

The voice changed. It was vigorous now, a choir of male and female voices meshing perfectly together in laughter and rage.

The mightiest stir uncomfortably and turn away while reality cries out in frustration. Good and bad? Order? Balance? Fate? What are those? This is not a fairytale. This is not one of those stories.

A quill moves, driven by a merciless hand of stars and nonsense.

Chaos reigns where order has failed and if one’s mad enough to make use of it, the world will fearfully spin to the whims of a dice! Opportunities lie everywhere, and a shift of perception is all it takes to find them. Take a step and laugh, and cry, both in frustration and joy, and know it is the work of chaos.

No plans are safe. No plots are absolute. No power is hidden.

Don’t trip too soon. Don’t fall.

The world buzzed with static and it felt like his mind would be shaken to pieces. Sunday looked up, despite himself. The darkest part of the night sky seemed to wink at him. The sound of shattered glass echoed everywhere and the surroundings grew scorching hot.

A Prophet cries in anguish as the lake that reflects fate turns to glass and shatters into a million pieces. They cut at his eyes. He should not have looked tonight.

A Maiden, an Empress, a Crone. All three but one. A strange book falls from her hands and lands in a distant fireplace. The wood ignites on its own and all is ash. There’s a smirk in the crackling embers as she screams.

A chorus of voices dies down, and a mighty one decides to withhold their gift to you. Where chaos treads, no one is safe.

Another fabled one senses you. Not of us. A lost one. A dangerous one. She butchers hopes and burns dreams. Come to her, and learn her craft…

A tree stands motionless, uncaring. A storyteller hides far away, yet still dwells behind the corner. A young master’s eyes shine from wine and laughter.

And chaos reigns supreme.

The words kept echoing for a while. Sunday felt his brain churn from exhaustion and confusion. He didn’t have the slightest idea what was happening. The only explanation was madness. Cosmical, unrestrained, and utter madness!

The voice returned to normal and something made Sunday refocus, despite the effort it took him to do so. It spoke in a hushed tone as if afraid to be found out now.

A hunter stirs in a long-forgotten hall that exists only in the shadows of ill minds. He sniffs the air and listens to the whispers of the trees outside. Some gifts have no place in the living world, no matter who wields them. Some gifts should not be lightly given as they make you a target.

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He smiles and sits up. With nary a word his hounds appear before him from the darkest corners. They thirst. They hunger. No matter how many tries it takes, no matter how many lives.

There is prey to be found.

The hunt will never end.

The narrating voice turned to a faint whisper. A warning.

Something is hunting you, weak wretch. Grow strong enough to defend yourself before it finds you, or you will be just another fallen. Nameless. Forgotten. In darkness.

Sunday felt terror. The last part was meant for him only, ushered fast and low. He felt as if there was a pair of inhuman eyes glaring at the nape of his neck. At the heart of his soul. The terror was akin to staring at the wave of darkness. This didn’t sound like a gift, nor a riddle. It was a straightforward ‘you’re fucked’.

No more are offered but a last one is given to all. May you understand the value of knowing yourself.

A golden page appeared before him, making the space around him shudder. It unfurled and black words flowed upon it as if being written by an invisible hand. Before he could read them, the narrator spoke again and the page disappeared.

A blade remains dull without a grindstone. And so, a stolen soul that will not know peace begins its second life. A wheel turns. Your story will soon truly begin.

Good luck and safe journeys, Mr. Sunday, and may all of the Divine tremble before you.

The voice was sweet at the end, like the caress of a mother, not that Sunday would know what that was like. However, it brought along a calm that made him want to close his eyes.

Oh no. Sunday drifted off for just a moment, his lids closing on their own. Then, startled, he opened them to see the infinite slip past. He was either falling or flying. Not much difference when he was not in control. Stars looked like blurry lines all around him and the nothingness of the void was but a billowing curtain. He opted to keep his eyes closed. Things were better that way.

However, the darkness proved no savior. His eyelids cracked despite himself and he saw a vision of a world. Not the one he was used to. Not at all. It spun before him like a globe.

Bustling cities and harbors littered with blurry living forms. Some of them were like fireflies amid flies, hiding their light deep inside but still shining bright. Others were dark and wretched and twisting and searching for a life to ruin. He felt indifferent to both. However, deep down he knew there would be choices before him.

Next, he saw massive caverns and twisting tunnels beneath the ground. Kingdoms of dirt and stone bathed in flowing fire, and frozen castles with nary a soul inside. Like the gaze of a bird, his eyes rose and swam toward a huge forest of dark green and shadows, stretching as far as the horizon. It hid its strange dwellers beneath the crowns of massive trees and sheltered both wonder and depravity. The deep woods whispered songs of old to him, and Sunday felt a corner of his very soul cheer.

Again, another spin, another change. What came was a holy mountain bathed in the rays of the morning sun. A statue of a terrible monster made of a strange stone that swallowed sunlight stood guard there, looking over a hidden valley covered in smoke.

Then he saw armies holding massive walls against hordes of twisted monsters. Strange monsters. Familiar. There was corruption. Wrongness. Souls blazing like bonfires rose from the undead and the living alike, fighting side by side.

Vision after vision places filled with life and wonder swam before his eyes. The sights left a strange longing inside of him. He wanted to see more, to experience more, to travel like he hadn’t been able ever before. Maybe dying like he had wasn’t so bad if it allowed him to experience a new world.

Something laughed at the thought. Something grounded and real, that was a part of him. Molded by starvation and cold, molded by having to fight for each scrap of cloth and knowledge. There was no world without suffering. But just maybe, it would be different for him this time. It was up to him to make it so. Not that he understood any of the things that were happening or these so-called gifts. The narration had been more confusing than anything as if whoever spoke cared little or purposely wanted to mislead him.

A change in sensations pulled him out of his thoughts. Cold prickling at his skin, and air in his lungs. He didn’t need it, but it was there and felt nice. It took a moment for him to reconsider. His screaming voice echoed in his ears, unleashed from his inner world and out in the open. There was no one to hear. For now.

He finally felt like himself, if different. Repressed emotions were bubbling beneath confusion and fear, and he reigned them all in. Sunday had trained himself to pull whatever he needed to the surface, like a magician with a hat. Only instead of rabbits he held his many faces there and chose the one which would serve him in the moment. They were a bit of a mess now.

There was also discomfort. It took him a second to get used to the control of his new body that had been only a leaden vessel for his soul so far. The brain struggled to catch up, but soon he was flailing his limbs all on his own, instead of relying on some reptilian instinct. Now the body was truly his. It was him.

All that and more wouldn’t mean much if he became an undead splatter on some rock though. Or whatever surface he hit at his current falling speed. Maybe some jelly would save him? What were the chances of a sea of jelly existing in this new world he was headed towards? Or cotton candy, although he doubted any amount of it would do the job. Whatever was responsible for putting knowledge of weird existentially disruptive certainties in his head was doing a terrible job right at this moment.

Sunday’s thoughts went crazy, which was both a very familiar state of being and a whole new experience. He scratched it down to becoming a different species altogether. Death didn’t seem scary when it was such a recent event. He opened one eye and found himself still in space, but he could determine up from down now as a there was rapidly approaching planet right in front of him. The one he zoomed over just now, perhaps? He decided the world signified ‘down’ for all intents and purposes.

It looked massive and was growing by the second. It resembled Earth somewhat… if he squinted his eyes and rotated his head a bit. It had a lot of greens and blues and whites. Was that purple? Some strange yellows and reds too. A pink island or just a reflection of light? Maybe it was all in his head. A large part of the world looked to be almost translucent and covered in something dark. That was weird.

He prepared for entrance into the stratosphere. He knew enough to know it would not be pleasant but hoped that whatever forces were doing all of this to him would be gracious enough to stop him from burning to a cinder.

He felt only a weak breeze as he shot through clouds and kept accelerating down. He caught a glimpse of his flailing hand. His skin had turned lighter, more human, but not quite there. It was smoother than before. He tried to look between his legs and it took him a few tries, but in the end, he felt satisfied. Some things had gone back to the way they should be.

Sunday looked down and saw a large bustling city rapidly approaching. It looked like a promising starting place if he survived the fall.

Things might not be so bad! He thought, against the better advice of Old Rud, who considered having good expectations as good as kicking your own nuts.

Soon he was proven right.

Sunday’s foot twitched, searching for ground that wasn’t there. It somehow found it against all odds. The next sequence of events felt like getting one’s tongue stuck to a frozen piece of metal because of a dare. But it was summer, and it was not just the tongue but all of the insides of the body that felt like they were stuck. It was chaos.

Everything stilled and was drained of color.

The universe shuddered for a moment. It shook like the picture on a glitching monitor, and a loud grinding static filled Sunday’s ears.

The world spun beneath him.

He had no time to look around as he found himself falling straight through a thatched roof.

The floor beneath accepted his passionate embrace and gifted him one in return.