Betrayal

Introduction

Everyone in the town knows it by now. The fire in that building a year ago. That whole place was destroyed into ashes, until today. The story was told all over the place and we all know there was only one survivor lurking in our town that still haunts us to this day. People just thought that she died in the fire too or went missing. There's three people in the story everyone knows everything about, River, Emily, and Mia. River was the one with the journal, which we got the story from. I haven't heard the story a hundred times, so I don't know many details of it. However, I know the main plot of it was that River and her friend got into a music program and during the concert of the final day, the main killer, Agent 19, set the whole building ablaze. There's not the worst she's done though, she's slaughtered children beforehand and made them suffer tremendously. None of the people at the concert survived that day. Even River died, but she wrote down her death right before it happened. We all know 19 lived on, but no one figured out how. I might go through the same fate as those children because I got into the music program River did, knowing full well 19's my teacher too and will be there again. Before any of that starts, last night, my friends and I preformed a ritual. It was extremely dangerous, raising people from the dead, so we were all horrified. We resurrected Mia, River, and Emily, but nothing happened as far as we could tell. Today, though, the building that was burned down for so many months, I passed by again today, as usual, but it looked entirely rebuilt, it was impossible to make a building like that so fast. My friends I did the ritual with were Camila and Asher. I've known Camila since I was eight and I've known Asher since I was seven. They're my dearest friends and nothing will ever come between us.

I have a little pet, a phoenix, named Niko. I've had him since I was five and now, we're practically inseparable. I wasn't the first owner he's had though, and certainly won't be the last. Phoenixes are a type of bird made completely up of fire and comes from ashes. They'll never die because whenever they seem like they will, they get reincarnated from the ashes and make a copy of the same exact bird. Many people fear them because they don't want to get set on fire, but Niko could never hurt a fly. He's always been very gentle, especially when I was little. He would always protect me if there was any sort of danger, ranging from a stop sign on the street, to a killer on the loose. When danger approaches, he gives me all the facts to possibly know about the situation and the best way to approach it. This place has always been terrifying from all the ghosts to murderers that could sprawl out at any second. Most of the time in my childhood, I would be so scared that I wouldn't be able to leave my house no matter what, even for school. This is part of the reason why I'm so scared of going to the music program physically and in person. Even though I can get out every once and a while, I hate when I have to go to a place I don't know at all, especially with all the chaos because it's in a different building than usual. Every time I hear a loud sound, like children screaming or a book slamming down on a desk, it always sounds like a gunshot in my ears, but I know that's not possible because guns have been banned for a very long time. People say that's because the government wants to see us kill people more brutally and letting people suffer for a while before their death. It's normal to hear about murderers and gangs on the loose. On the television, as a young child, I'd see pictures and videos of the dead body and how the person died. Most of the time, I wouldn't scream or cry, I would just stare at the screen, mystified and intrigued. Ever since those days, I've been interested in death. I wouldn't say it's an uncommon or bad thing in the world we're living in, so I use it to my advantage and every single time I've ever killed, no one knew or found the body.