Christopher J Coughlin

Aivyn Christopher J Coughlin

Slits of light pierced through the dusty cracks of the shuttered window. Age had not been kind to this neglected hostel which sat dilapidated on the outskirts of the tainted town. For decades the innkeeper rented rooms by the hour to the forlorn people of Manchester who often used the dingy quarters for all sorts of indescribable horrors. My eyes could easily see the failed attempts of scrubbing the dust-covered floor clean of scattered blood, the odd stain, and fear. Across from me sat a young girl, seventeen or eighteen at the oldest, a mere child in the eyes of the cruel world. Sunlight danced heavily upon her wavy black hair as it spilled disheveled across her pale face, a rippling darkness that betrayed its natural beauty. Her long, white hands flipped furiously through the leather-bound text that rested upon the pitted hardwood table. Each movement stirred a furious flurry of dust that bobbed in and out of the narrow shadows - a never ending game of hide and seek. I retreated slowly into the shallow corner of the small room, not wanting to disturb her studies, deep into the darkness of which I had spent so much of my life. Not that it mattered much - for she knew my face, she knew me. It was reckless, letting someone so close after all these years. Not only reckless, but dangerous for both her and I. Long ago I had withdrawn from this narcissistic human society which plagued the earth, and blended myself with the darkness that eternally lived on the edge of humanity. That darkness consumed me, leaving naught but an empty, deadly shell. Follow Aivyn's tale from the very beginning as, for the first time in millennia, he brings his story into the light. Raw and brutal, and full of deceit, he tells of the discovery of a great empire long lost to folktales and mythology. Buried in this discovery are shards of the truth that will set him free.