They say you ought to start your story with some kind of hook.

I wish I had one.

Really, any tool would do. When it comes to holding onto the precipice of a temple’s highest tower, basically anything other than your own white knuckle grip is favorite. The real thing straining me isn’t my own weight, barely supported by my torn shoulder. No, it’s this rich bastard above me cackling and monologuing.

I can feel the sweat down my back, cold in the early morning autumn chill. The salty breeze flows inwards from the rising dawn across the glittering ocean. I can see that light now, glittering in the ruby encased in that damned black iron pendant and necklace, held aloft in the hand of the aforementioned bastard. His red cloak billows in the wind, casting a crimson blur in my vision.

I can barely hear him anyway, my ears aren’t popping, and they’re flooded with the rushing of my hot blood. Nothing but this cracking brick is standing between me and a quick meeting with the much too distant cobbles. All of this is a lot to put on a guy who didn’t even get a good night’s sleep…

But somehow, I hear the chanting, the spell that is being formulated far behind the cultist.

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I grit my teeth and pull as hard as I can, planting my weakened bleeding hand on another brick to pull myself up to the broken stone guard rail. I’m able to see over the edge now. Under the great overhead which houses the massive temple bells, I see Mittens twitching her paw in circles.

Chroma condenses about her fingers, green with noxious poisonous energy. The grimalkin’s white fur stands on end despite her flat expression as the arcane semblance forms.

But then the spell is shattered by a blast of red fire from the cultist above me, sending her flying backwards in an explosion. She falls limply against my fiancée.

Rage. Sudden and volcanically hot, shoots up through my body. My heart races, and with a strength I had thought I’d already lost when the damn necklace was taken from me, I pull myself up.

Then he kicks me in the face. The asshole.

And I fall. A showering of brick dust in my wake as gravity takes me to my final destination. All I see now is the rainbow cascade of light from a stained glass window. I’m blinded by it, my senses entirely lost as I’m buoyed by air resistance. All I can hear is the whistle of wind and the chaotic scrambling of birds.

But, I don’t think that’s fair. I mean. None of this is fair, obviously. I don’t deserve to be falling from a damn church tower! But, what I’m actually getting at is that it’s not really fair for you, dear reader, for me to drop you here.

Why don’t we turn back time a bit… eh… to just after the sun set! Twilight. Yeah. I’ll tell you everything just how I remember it, and I’ll try not to exaggerate too much. And hey, just for you, I’ll even leave in the spicy bits! You’re welcome.