The word 'Farewell' should have been bittersweet. A gentle ache after four years of shared lectures, last-minute exam cramming, and the quiet camaraderie of institutional life. For me, it was just a hollow syllable floating in the stale auditorium air, as tasteless as the diluted fruit punch the cultural committee served every semester.
My name is Dante. For most of my college life, I've been a satellite, orbiting the periphery of other people's vibrant social systems. Close enough to feel their gravity, but far enough out that my absence would never alter their spin.
'I'm done pretending that I care,' I told myself, adjusting the ceremonial sash across my charcoal blazer. The mirror above the washbasin in the men's room threw back a stranger's face—a boy with tired umber eyes and a wry, thin line for a mouth. 'One last performance, then I get to walk offstage for good.'
Outside, the farewell program roared toward its manufactured climax. Crimson and gold banners sagged from the balcony rails; fairy lights winked like dying stars. "Batch of 2025 - Soar High!" a vinyl poster declared with pathetic optimism. I wondered how many of us would remember those words once the attrition of the real world began.
"And now, our final dramatic act for the evening—'Adieu, Alma Mater!'" The voice from the speakers was painfully cheerful. A predictable skit designed to evoke a nostalgia no one genuinely felt yet. On the floor, couples linked arms and friend groups clustered for a final volley of selfies, their faces illuminated by the pale, ghostly light of their phone screens. My own phone remained in my pocket. What was there to capture? My own vacant corner?
When the lights dimmed for the concluding slow song, the dance floor filled instantly. Glitter-dusted gowns swirled against tuxedo blacks, laughter rising in foamy waves that never reached the stairs where I sat, chin in palm, counting the overhead bulbs. Let it end. Please, just end.
My wish was granted, though not in any way I could have imagined.
The first flash felt like a faulty spotlight, a blinding, painful strobe that made me wince. The second split the roof. A jagged column of white-blue lightning, thick as a tree trunk, speared straight through the auditorium ceiling. It didn't just strike; it erased. The disco ball vaporized in a silent burst of silver shards. The sound came a half-breath later, a physical, bone-shattering concussion that punched the air from my lungs and turned the world to white noise and pain.
Every nerve screamed. Every muscle seized. For one blind, timeless instant, I thought the world had folded into a singularity with me at its core.
So that's it… I'm really dying on graduation night. The thought was laced with a dark, detached amusement. A fittingly absurd end to a pointless performance.
But death did not claim me. When my vision returned, the fluorescent panels and sagging banners were gone, replaced by an immeasurable canopy of stars. I was lying on cool, damp moss, my lungs dragging in pine-laced air that was so clean it was almost painful. Around me, my classmates were stirring, their faces glowing faintly beneath the alien light of two moons I had never seen before. One was a perfect, serene pearl; the other, a sickly, fractured green. One hundred students, uprooted from a campus auditorium and transplanted into a primeval forest like mismatched, terrified seedlings.
Confusion curdled into panic.
"Where are we?"
"Was that a terrorist attack?"
"Check for injuries—Sahil's bleeding!"
Voices overlapped, fear sharpening every consonant. A girl began to sob, her cries thin and reedy in the vast, ancient silence of the woods. Somebody else cursed heaven and earth with a raw, desperate fury.
Then, the forest hushed. Not gradually, but instantly, as if a great, unseen conductor had lowered a baton. Silver motes of light, like dust in a moonbeam, began to drift into a widening column before us. They coalesced, swirling and brightening until they birthed a woman—no, something more. She hovered a handspan above the ground, bathed in a dawn-white radiance that cast no shadow. Her hair, the color of rising sunlight, floated about her like a living veil, and her eyes… her eyes held entire galaxies.
"Welcome, heroes," the apparition intoned, her voice both a whisper that tickled the ear and a bell toll that resonated in the bone. "I am Liora, Goddess of Light. I beg forgiveness for summoning you so abruptly."
A collective, shuddering gasp went through the crowd. Someone—the varsity football captain, I think—found the courage to shout, his voice cracking with a mixture of terror and indignation. "Send us back! We have families!"
Liora inclined her head, a look of profound, ancient sorrow cutting a fine line across her flawless face. "Were it within my power, I would. Alas, this summoning is bound by a covenant older than your stars. Every fifty of your years, champions from distant realms are called to this crucible. This time, fate selected you."
Rage, hot and impotent, flickered through the crowd. The overturned chairs of the auditorium were now moss-covered branches; the alumni band's keyboards had become fallen logs. "What gives you the right!" a thin boy yelled, his fists trembling.
The goddess's light dimmed a fraction, as if in sympathy. "Choice was never mine. Yet I shall grant what comfort I can: strength, purpose, and the chance to ascend beyond your mortal limits."
"All hundred of us?" The question came from Eric, the class valedictorian, ever the numbers guy.
The glow around Liora stuttered, like a candle flame meeting a sudden wind. "I… cannot promise that."
A new, colder fear rippled outward. "Elaborate," demanded Maya, head of the debate club, her voice sharp.
Liora folded her hands upon her breastplate of woven aurora. "To stand among this world's legends, you must first survive the Trial of Verdant. Only those who prevail will earn the right to walk the lands of Zerawell as heroes. I do not know how many hearts will remain beating when the final gate opens."
Pandemonium. Pleas, curses, frantic, useless bargaining. But beneath it all throbbed a single, brutal truth: we were no longer students. We were prey, suddenly loosed into a realm where the rules were different and ignorance was a death sentence.
Liora raised her arms, and threads of living light spun from her fingertips, weaving intricate, glowing sigils above each student's head. "Unique skills—an echo of your deepest potential. Form alliances, temper your gifts, and heed the twin moons. Their light will be your only guide from this forest." The constellations overhead shifted, as if bowing to her decree. "Monsters lurk within these trees. Plan, train, and triumph. That is the only path."
So the game begins.
Amid the clamor, I tasted something coppery and exhilarating on my tongue. It was not fear. It was anticipation. The profound, soul-deep ennui that had calcified around my bones back home cracked like old plaster, flaking away to reveal an ember I thought had died long ago. The performance was over. The real stage had just been revealed.
Liora's projection turned solemn, her voice regaining its divine authority. "Approach one by one. I shall bestow your skill and answer a single question each. Then I must depart, and your destiny will unfold as it will."
A hesitant, broken queue began to form. Names were called; glyphs of light burned into skin like gentle frost; whispered, desperate exchanges passed between mortal and divine. I did not join them. I watched, I counted, I analyzed.
Knowledge is power, I thought, a cold, predatory smile touching my lips for the first time. And patterns are knowledge. Observe first. Act later.