“good morning.” I say to no one as always while I run my fingers through my black mess of curly hair and roll out of bed. The dull sunlight seeps through my blinds hitting the wall opposite of it directly in my small apartment I can barely categorize as a home. I drag the thick blanket along with me as I trudge to the small nook of which I call a kitchen, make myself some cereal, and check the calendar. I’m not sure why I checked, I knew exactly what day it was, june 17, the anniversary of the day the darkness won. On this day 100 years ago some crazy deity rose out of the earth and just took over, everyone started calling her the darkness but her real name is Erebus, im pretty sure it’s greek or something, anyway, when that happened, some people decided to become her servents, others joined the rebellion, but most people, like me, chose to lay low and hope they don't get in her way. Now you may be thinking,

“Cayden,” (thats me) “how could you just sit there while there is literal darkness destroying life as you know it?” but that's not right, in fact I don't think she’s actually killed anyone in the century she’s been here. Imprisoned for life for simply looking at her funny,... well that's a different story. The point is shes not as bad as people thought she would be, instead of being a total monster, she acts more like a power obsessed dictator, barking orders and acting out if they aren’t obeyed immediately. But I live with this, besides, the only time i’m ever forced to be ordered by her anyway is today, when Erebus holds her annual festival to celebrate her reign on our world. I hear a knock on the door and look out the peephole to see an outline of one of Erebus’ goons, he’s probably coming to tell me about the festival, as if I didn’t know, they call themselves kathara, which in greek means pure ones, but trust me, they are anything but. I know you think im judging too much, especially because serving her is all they’ve ever known, but I only kind of hate them because they serve her, I mainly dislike them because they are all complete jerks! I have yet to meet one that had the capability of showing any amount of real empathy in my 18 years of being alive. I really want to ignore him and stay inside, but if I do that i’ll probably get imprisoned for life, so I guess I have no choice.

“Hello?” I murmur as I crack open the door and rub my eyes, emphasising that I just woke up.

“Sorry to wake you sir” no he’s not ” I have come to remind you that erebus is hosting another annual festival, and all who fail to attend will be thrown in jail till the next millenia.” he stated bluntly.

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world.” I say as I slap on the biggest smile I can. Apparently that was all he wanted to say because in a matter of seconds the door was slammed in my face and he sauntered off to the next house. In all that I almost forgot I was meeting my friends before the festival so we could go together. I throw on some clothes a rush out the door, darting through alleys and climbing fences. When I get to Ethan’s house I see jake, layla, and darwin are already there, Darwin is younger than all of us, but that’s never held him back from doing anything. We all talk about how our life has been, as usual, all our lives are pretty boring. When it’s time to leave we all walk to the festival. Like every year, it starts off with some guy giving a long speech about how great Erebus is, but this time, it’s different. At the time he usually dismisses us to go see the attractions, he adds to his speech.

“This festival will be a bit different than the past ones,” He explains “ Every 100 years Erebus must be given 10 human sacrifices, and at this time I will be telling you who they are.” Everyone’s faces go pale, and chatter spreads throughout the crowd. “Silence!” he shouts “ the names are, Parker Berry, Cedric Sharp…” He gets through nine of the ten names and I started to relax a bit, me or nobody I knew had been called and there was no way we could be next. “ and finally, Darwin Hale” My heart sunk as I watched my friend stand up to be sacrificed. There is absolutely no way I could let this happen, so I grab his wrist and whisper

“Run.” He stared at me for a moment, then nodded, I glanced at my friends to see they got the message, they nodded too. Each of them knew exactly what was about to happen, and in unison, we ran into the crowd, trying to stay hidden from Erebus or any of her kathara. Somehow we all successfully made it out and head for the forbidden town lines, no going back now. A rush of exhilaration spread throughout my body as we passed the line, marking ourselves as wanted criminals in this town for eternity, I guess we’re apart of the rebellion now, I wonder how that’ll turn out.