Chapter 1
Since the time Arius could remember, the world had never been quiet.
Numbers lingered where they should not, faint, transparent strings of digits superimposed over walls, over sky, over people. Colors blurred into one another in ways that words could not. There were colors that pushed against his vision, Colors that melted away as soon as he tried to fix on them.
It was described by doctors as a neurological disorder.
They labeled it the coping illusion.
However, the parents termed it something that would 'go away with time'.
It never did.
School was where he had learned to look through people instead of at them. To stare too long was to make the numbers grow more defined: patterns of them developing above people's heads, flickering at a quicker pace if the emotions were strong. If the teachers were yelling, the numbers swelled with fierce abandon. If someone was speaking a falsehood, the colors splintered into jagged spectrums that pounded his skull.
At the age of nineteen, Arius had given up trying to comprehend it.
Comprehension entailed hope
"Hope had to be a belief that the world was not essentially a bad place
He was at the edge of a cliff, looking down at the black sea, his birthday dinner with his friends behind him. The wind was laced with the smell of salt, tugging at his jacket as it blew up from below.
The numbers were quiet down there.
The numbers were sparse.
Almost merciful.
He moved nearer.
The colors of the world faded—like a painting left in the sun for too long.
And then there was a shift Distortion flickered on the horizon of his sight. Not digits. Not light. Something else. Arius froze.