Farewell was supposed to be a big deal. At least, that's what everyone said. Four years of classes and studying were meant to end with some kind of feeling. For Dante, it was just the end of a long, dull performance.
In college, he was an outsider. He watched other people's lives from the sidelines, a ghost at their party. If he disappeared, no one would notice, and honestly, he didn't care.
"I'm done pretending I care," he muttered to his reflection in the restroom mirror. The face staring back was a stranger's, with tired, dark eyes and a thin, unimpressed mouth. He adjusted the ceremonial sash over his blazer. One last performance, he told himself. Then I can finally leave.
Outside, the party roared toward its fake climax. Crimson and gold banners sagged from the rails. A banner declared, Batch of 2025 – Soar High! with a kind of desperate optimism. He wondered how many of them would even remember that once real life started beating them down.
"And now, our final dramatic act for the evening: Adieu, Alma Mater!" The announcer's voice was painfully cheerful, introducing some skit meant to stir nostalgia for a place they hadn't even left yet.
On the floor, couples held hands and groups of friends huddled together for one last round of selfies, their faces lit by the glow of their phones. Dante's phone stayed in his pocket. What am I going to take a picture of? My empty corner of the room?
When the lights dimmed for the final slow song, the dance floor filled. Gowns swirled against tuxedos, and laughter rose in waves that never reached the stairs where he sat, silently counting the lightbulbs overhead.
Let it end, he thought. Please, just end.
His wish came true, just not how he expected.
The first flash was like a broken spotlight, so blinding it made him flinch. The second split the roof open. A jagged column of white-blue lightning, thick as a tree trunk, tore straight through the ceiling. It didn't just strike the disco ball, it erased it in a silent puff of silver dust.
The sound came a half-second later. It wasn't a noise, it was a physical force that punched the air from his lungs and turned the world into a wall of static. Every nerve in his body screamed. For one long, blind moment, he thought the world was collapsing in on itself, with him at the very center.
So that's it, a detached part of his brain noted. I'm really dying on graduation night. How absurd.
But he didn't die.
When his vision cleared, the auditorium was gone. Above him stretched a vast, endless sky full of stars. He was lying on cool, wet moss. The air was so clean it almost hurt to breathe.
Around him, his classmates stirred. Their faces were lit by the glow of two moons he had never seen before. One a perfect white pearl, the other a sickly, shattered green. A hundred of them, plucked from a party and dropped into a forest like terrified children.
Panic bubbled up.
"Where are we?"
"Was that a terrorist attack?"
"Check for injuries, Ariel's bleeding!"
Voices overlapped, sharp with fear. A girl started sobbing, her cries thin in the vast silence of the woods. Someone else just cursed over and over.
Then, all at once, everything went quiet.
In the clearing, silver specks of light drifted together. They swirled and brightened until they formed the shape of a woman.
She floated a few inches off the ground, glowing with a soft white radiance that cast no shadow. Her hair was the color of sunrise, and her eyes looked like they had witnessed the birth of stars.
"Welcome, heroes," she said. Her voice was both a whisper in the ear and a tolling bell in the bones. "I am Liora, Goddess of Light. Forgive me for summoning you so suddenly."
A collective gasp ran through the crowd. The varsity football captain found his voice first, shouting, "Send us back! We have families!"
Liora tilted her head, and a look of ancient sadness crossed her perfect face. "If I could, I would. But this is a pact older than your world. Every fifty years, champions are called. This time, it was you."
"What gives you the right!" a skinny boy shouted, fists shaking.
Her light dimmed a little. "The choice was not mine. But I will grant you what I can, strength, purpose, and a chance to become more than you are."
"All hundred of us?" asked Eric, the class valedictorian.
Her glow flickered. "I… cannot promise that."
A colder fear spread through the group. "Explain," demanded Maya, head of the debate club.
"To become heroes in this world, you must first survive the Trial of Verdant," Liora said softly. "Only those who pass will earn the right to walk the lands of Zerawell. I do not know how many of you will still be alive when the final gate opens."
Chaos erupted again, pleading, cursing, bargaining, but beneath it all was the brutal truth. They weren't students anymore. They were prey in a game without rules.
Liora raised her arms. Threads of light spun from her fingertips, weaving glowing sigils above each of their heads. "These are your gifts, an echo of your truest potential. Form alliances. Learn to wield them. The twin moons will be your only guide out of this forest."
The stars above seemed to shift. "There are monsters in these woods," she warned. "Plan, train, and endure. That is your only path."
So it begins.
Dante tasted something sharp and coppery on his tongue. It wasn't fear, it was excitement. The heavy boredom that had weighed on him back home cracked and fell away, revealing a spark he thought had died years ago. The performance was over. The real show was just beginning.
"Approach one by one," Liora commanded, her voice firm once more. "I will grant your blessing and answer a single question for each of you. Then I must leave you to your destiny."
A broken, hesitant line began to form.
Dante didn't join it. He hung back. He watched. He listened.
Knowledge is power, he thought, a cold, sharp smile touching his lips for the very first time. And patterns are the key to knowledge.