The pale sun parted my eyelids through its weak rays bleeding into the curtain along my window, welcoming me to another semi-clouded morning. The stillness of frigid air that hung in the room brushed up against my exposed skin, making the micro hair follicles along my arms stand up in a frenzy and my skin to take up in arms the bumpy flesh reaction of coldness. I could half-mindedly tell that my blanket was mostly, if not entirely, launched off my body due to the coldness I felt. And the known fact that I was a restless sleeper that seemed to not care of the security of a blanket.

"Crimson?" a voiced beckoned from outside the room, it's voice a tinny echo that crept into my ears making no useful recognition of what I just heard. "She better not be sleeping through today of all days..." the voice whispered to itself, frustrated, before saying "Crimson get up, you're gonna be late". It must've been my mother, no one else would be calling out like so this early in the morning.

That's if it was still early...

'Late...' the faint voice in my head repeated to itself, as if it was trying to get clarification on what late was exactly. Or what I was gonna be late for. All these efforts despite just waking up from what felt like a deep sleep.

I rotated onto my side emitting a lazy 'huff' to look at a white porcelain box on top of an end table next to me. Digitized red figures holo-projected upwards in a 3D figure that said '10:00, 23rd of Syra'.

I murmured the projection's message to myself, trying to recall what was happening, or the significance of that recurring late that was stuck in my head. I raised my hands to my face, rubbing my eyes in a rhythmic motion to remove any sleep that still hung onto it. The room fogged up with black pin pricks that dissolved slowly as I removed my balled up fists from my eyelids. I looked around the materialized room to observe the immaculate neatness that I took time and effort into. Without that effort, it was usually a pigsty of clothes and unnecessary personal belongings not being where they should be. But the shocking neatness that I forgot about brought a half smile stretched into my cheeks.

Unwillingly, I shifted out of my bed and onto the white carpeted floor. My bare feet skimming over the shaggy ground beneath, using all my strength to levy myself off the mattress. My vision became weary with black pinpricks dancing around the aura of color that rippled throughout, my heart thumped profoundly against the insides of my chest. I had to stop moving and place support against the end table next to my bed as I regained myself, hoping not to fall suddenly. Surely blacking out from a sudden blood-shift wasn't the best way to start my morning, or even good in general, but I disregarded the one instance.

It took a moment before I could stand on my own and be left with loitering in the middle of the room with no idea of what to do next. I took a slow double take of the room again, receiving a weird pang of depression as if I was never going to see the place again. The feeling felt so randomized and out of place that I couldn't help but to focus on it. Surely the stirring in my mind from waking up must've had some reason to this. That or the weird dream I could vaguely remember upon waking with mixed drunken images of lights, movement...

...deep dread of loss and

"Crimson!" my other shouted again, more annoyed this time. My mind jerked suddenly back to reality from whatever I had fallen into. I didn't realize how long I was standing there for staring at the picture of my father and I absentmindedly. His smile seared back at me with a warming welcome that I needed for the morning.

"I'm coming mom" I responded to her irritated calls with a shocking grogginess that snaked up my throat. All of the enthusiasm I had going to sleep seemingly flew out the window the moment I woke up this morning. It was going to be another one of those fluff days where nothing happens, same as any other, and I'd have to drag my unwilling body around for all of it.

Even if it was one of the most important days of my natural born life...

As I remembered in that moment from hearing my mother call me so frantically that today was way more dire and important than I would initially remember it to be. How could I forget something so monumental as today?

I lazily sauntered my way into the bathroom before I rested my hands on the marble counter, feeling the smooth and cool top contrast my rather warm hands. My breaths were paced, slow and long with each inhale and exhale, trying to let myself relax. A technique that was taught to me that I'd took into practice more seriously than other people. The sense of taking slow and methodical calculated breaths was something of a

Virtue

to feel deep breaths expanding my lungs and releasing from them. It was an ancient technique called meditation. Something from before the times of our city where normal people practiced to relieve any stresses in them, and before them an ancient people who incorporated into their culture. Though no one knows who that ancient people were. Again, I felt slightly disoriented before sobering up rather quickly from the meditation, or the half part of meditation I used then.

I turned the curved handle of the sink to let cold water escape out of the faucet. I cupped my hands to catch some of the water before I splashed it onto my face.

My entire body became alert at the sudden jolt of refreshing coldness, the water clinged to my face and slithered its way down to my jaw and chin before returning to the drain below.. That was sure to keep me going through the day if nothing else would. Or at least give me that refreshing boost I needed.

I looked from the sink to the mirror placed in front of me, intently staring at the set of blue irises that looked back at me. Their bright blue hue having warped varying shades were seemingly fixated on their opposite, seeming almost calming more than confrontational. I casually gravitated my eyes towards the beads of water that dropped from the hairline of my short hair. My coppery brown hair was pushed to one side as a result from a night of tossing and turning. Not the most attractive look if I had to wager but I wasn't expecting much upon waking. I grinned a bit to myself, refusing to even look at my teeth at the moment, insecure of their apparent crookedness and uneven layout of them.

I cupped some more water to apply to my hair, letting the water run course through the strands of my soft and askew strands. I never really had it styled in any particular way instead I opted to let it flourish in its messy appearance that seemed almost suiting for me on most occasions.

I sighed to myself silently, bringing forth the revelation I remembered of what significance today and late actually meant.

'Today's the day' I thought to myself more clearly. Letting those words stand to bring light of what I was facing.

Today I, along with seventy members that were stationed in the seven factions in the city, would endure the final trials, specifically catered to our own attributes, that would help finally free us to be functioning members of society. Each faction would help contribute in their own ways to improve the city. Officially signifying us as true adults.

I'd become a true Vulrant by the end of the day...

And I wasn't sure what to make of all of it. A part of me was thrilled, I'd become an adult, an incredible feat that I never imagined that one day I'd reach. I'd become an adult, move out on my own, be reliable for myself, help the society if I ever so chose to improve itself as has done for as long as our history allows to be remembered. All of the fixings.

Another part of me wanted to stay young, be under the care of my parents and live life free and however way I saw fit without the constant stressing fear that I may be screwing everything up on my own.

Just not move on.

There was a simple answer to the overly complicated thought, I just didn't really want to think of it at the moment.

I'd become apart of the city, a new generation to lead other generations ahead into another century of our time. There was no real escape from it, even if I really wanted one which I knew deep down I didn't, I couldn't hide from the future. My future.

The city, Zykard, which has stood for a grizzly millenia plus more, held a rough population of about ten thousand people. Ten thousand people and counting, worryingly reaching a thought that was whispered amongst others. Overpopulation. Not something I've heard any higher up officials utter out out of fear of what implications that would toll. That was a thought for another day. Zykard was partially forested in, over that time of a millenia from what I've been told. Before everything was just a bleak and bland slate of nothing that didn't teem with any forestry until time permitted it to. Now most of the vegetation grew along old abandoned houses that were scattered about the city. Some of it even went over the wall, with rope-like vines and leaves scattered about, growing accustomed to the wall's flat face. Though the vines were usually tended to and removed for more obvious reasons.

A great portion of the city is completely abandoned, with forgotten houses, forested in areas, demolished ruins. Very unsafe places for the vast majority of the population. That's not to say that there aren't people who still live there, usually the less fortunate and poor resided there. If there were ever a point in time of overpopulation becoming a reality; the abandoned sections of the city couldn't ever be utilized as a means of housing. From what I've heard there isn't enough resources to finance likewise quality structures to match the ones already made that are used by people. They'll remain abandoned for the time being unless the city wanted to just ostracize people into being poor and relocating them there. The other part of the city, the part that houses most of our people, is a neatly kempt cityscape that's clustered with houses and skyscrapers as far as the eye could see.

And protecting all of this life is a giant wall that circles along the perimeter of the city. The wall is a solid concrete structure that has stood tall for about all of the thousand years that the city has existed. Crowning the wall, outlooks for Xultants to look over the city and for security in case some curious soul wanted to get over it, were in place. There have been no real reason as to why the wall was still being maintained, except for the fact that the city's leader and its council ruled out for hundreds of years that no one is to go outside, let alone look at it.

Outside the wall, from what I've been told, is just large patches of trees along with rolling green fields and some desecrated lands filled in between them. Jungles of green and patches of sands and dirts would forever fill the horizon with no abnormality to shake up the mix.

Beyond that, it was anyone's guess. The edge of the world, an endless repeat of what we can already observe, another city...

There was no reason for going out there due to it being a desolate wasteland of nothing, not so much as another civilization that existed out there from what the ancestors spoke of before. Hence the need to keep our civilization behind solid walls, we'd die out there way before we would die in the safety of our enclosure.

There would always be this deep underlying feeling that I needed to go outside the wall. I had no specific reason for doing so except for the fact that I wanted to see what was on the other side. Something different from 'patches of trees and grass', there must be something more out there than what they let on. How would they know anyways? It's not like anyone goes out there regularly to check. And what would lie beyond those trees and grass? It couldn't be the same thing forever and ever certainly. At least I believed it to be like that.

As much as the thought was attractive to go outside the walls, I'd never get to experience that in my lifetime, or possibly for another thousand years until something were to shake up the monotonous fixture of being within here.

Besides, people were content with staying inside, there was no reward for the risk of throwing themselves out there. At least for most of them. For others it could be a life goal to just get a peak, a step, a whiff of air beyond the walls. But I doubted for them as well that that dream could ever become a reality.

In the near center of our city is a tower that's higher than any other one built, probably even high enough to see beyond the top of the wall. All of them routinely running infrastructure of the entire city's life. In it holds most of the inner workings of important workers, the council members and our leader.

Her name was Zoe Amber, a woman who has no background whatsoever and somehow became the dictator of this city. The reason she has no background is because she came from the outside, she came from no place, had no family members or acquaintances with her. No indications she hailed from any docile home or place remotely considered a sanctuary out within the wastelands.

She was all by herself out there.

It was as though she was created out there from nothing, or arrived here from beyond our known world and was left to do something.

How she got to the city and where she came from is as big of a mystery as it gets, right along what's beyond our walls.

At the time she first came to Zykard; everyone was terrified to see a person come to the city from the outside, it was an ill-conceived notion that was never thought of before. And yet there she was, at the gate with no rhyme or reason as to why. And not even Zoe herself knew exactly why she was there or where she was. Our old leader, Ben, took the initiative to let her in and house her under close watch before they were to interrogate her and decide on what to do.

And then a couple of days later Ben was assassinated. Shot in the head by a sniper from a vantage point far away from where he was, somewhere out in the farmlands from what has been said.

They found the weapon, but not the triggerman or woman. No identification of fingerprints left behind, no account of the sniper being stolen anywhere. And to this day the person hasn't been brought forward for what they did.

Coincidence right? A stranger comes in from the outside, and two days later our leader is killed. Even when DNA tested she wasn't matched with the strange fingerprints left on the gun. No match could correspond with what was on the handle of the sniper from any citizen in the city. It was as though someone else not accounted for in Zykard's citizen files took in arms the assassination.

So in the disarray of a now dead leader, the council had no choice but to take up elections for the next leader of our city. And surely enough Zoe was elected to be the new leader.

That was about eighteen years ago, a year before I was even conceived, and even though I didn't necessarily know what life was like before Zoe had taken charge it felt like everything changed dramatically in between then and now.

For better or for worse varied with the people of the city.

I left my bedroom shaking off the overthinking my brain was doing, changing into newer and fresher clothes as I thought. I exited my bedroom into the hallway and into the living room that conjoined with the kitchen as well. I looked over to my right to see my mother looking over the food she was making before she shuffled around to work another aspect of the meal. Invisible vapors flowered onto my face as I walked closer into the kitchen, the smell of eggs, potatoes and bacon coalesced into my nostrils to much of my delight, and my eager stomach's, delight. I sighed in joy to the nostalgic smell of early childhood.

I looked up from the counter bordering the living room to see my slightly younger sister, Madelyn, carrying her plate of food over to the dining room table. She turned back and gave me warm grin as she walked past, and I did the same back to her. I felt a wave of envy in my heart realizing how much more beautiful she was than I. Madi had luscious light brown hair that was put up into a messy bun atop her head. A weird feat considering in our family I was the only one with the coppery tinge in my hair. My father had dark brown mostly black hair and my mother had sandy blonde hair. I hadn't thought of it much until recently but the genetics all seemed weird. Not a big issue really but it was a curious thought. Her blue eyes gleamed with relaxation as she started to eat her food.

Madi was apart of the Zyto faction, a different suit than the one I'd expect her to pick, but it seems to fit her well, or she fit well into it. She went her own path of being a Zyto, while my father ushered me into being a Vulrant like he was. And it seemingly works well for me too. I couldn't imagine myself being any other way.

"So Mom" Madi broke the silence between the three of us as she paused her eating. I walked up next to my mother, giving her a kiss on the cheek before I grabbed a plate for my food. She whispered 'morning' to me before responding back to Madi.

"So Madi" my mother leaned up against the fridge to rest while she looked at Madi, waiting for her to continue with what she was going to say. Looking at my mother, she looked more tired than usual. Dark purplish brown rings sagged under eyes that seemed to be coated in a dried moisture as though she'd been crying for sometime that I hadn't seen. I did want to ask her if something was wrong but it felt too inappropriate of a time to be doing so.

"I met... well... know this amazing guy in my faction who I've been talking with for the past year and I really think there could be something serious going on between us" she laughed a little to herself, being strangely giddy that contrasted what kind of faction she came from.

"A year? You've waited a year to tell me this?" Mom chuckled a bit. Maybe she wasn't upset? Just tired...

"Well yeah, I wasn't sure if we were really going steady at first but I really think it's going somewhere" Madi shrugged.

"If it takes a year to come to that conclusion then you must either be oblivious or not letting us on to more than just that" I commented. Madi just shrugged her shoulders again and looked down to her food to eat a bit more.

"Alright, alright. Well what's his name" our mother asked.

"I'm not sure of his real name but his numerical name is Thrree. Anyways, I think he's a really great guy. Drop-dead cute, sometimes talkative, soft guy once you really get to know him... I just like him more than I ever have with any guy before. Dare I say love him" she smiled, blushing at the mentioning of him. Knowing her she probably coddles him to death if she likes him that much. 'Loves' as she puts it. Poor guy...

"Mom, she talks the big talk, but we both know she's too shy to ask him out. Let alone admit her love for him" I grinned.

Out of the corner of my eye I could see from outside the window that billows of clouds were starting to roll in,