The boy with wings

Prologue

I stood outside the orphanage I had lived in for seven years now. On my eighteenth birthday two weeks ago I had decided to move back into my parents empty house. With my right hand I was holding my suitcase, the right one held my car keys. The car had been payed from the huge amount of money my Mom had left the family after her death. I had payed a lot from it throughout the years: clothes, haircuts, concerts, even a few operations I had to go through. I turned back to the door of the house and waved at my best and only friend Lynn. She waved back.

"Have fun, Oli! Call me when you can!"

She shouted and went back inside. Lynn actually was an orphan. She was only twelve and had been living in the orphanage all her life. I hoped she'll be okay without me living in the room next to hers. I took a deep breath, finally put the suitcase in the trunk and motivated myself to move on with my life.

The house was even bigger than I remembered. At least half of it was covered in ivy and the garden looked like a jungle. But when I unlocked the front door and stepped into the living room I realized the inside of the house had been taken care of. It was clean, everything was intact and looked exactly how I remembered.
I sighed heavily and flopped down on the old leather couch. It creaked. A framed picture fell off the wall. Shit. I picked it up. The glass was broken but the picture was still fine. It showed my Mom, shortly before chemo, my Dad, with his paintbrush behind his ear, me, with my knees scraped and my hair messy and... My sister Alice. She had died a year after my Mom, at the age of six. Car crash. A drunk driver hit her while playing on the road. After that, Dad had gone insane. He started locking himself in the attic, spending hours up there. Six months after Alice's funeral, he had hung himself in her room. I came to the orphanage after that.

The attic! Of course! Now I finally had the chance to see what was there! I jumped to my feet, dropping the picture again and ran up the stairs. But I stopped before I even reached the attic. A door had caught my attention: my old bedroom. The door was red and most of it was covered in posters of bands like Fall Out Boy and My Chemical Romance. It was obvious that I had had my emo phase why decorating this door. But there was one more thing... I lifted one shaky hand and slowly pulled off the "Black Parade" poster. This one I had put up to cover up the name painted on the wood of my door: Olivia. My birth name. Mom had put it there, being so proud of having a daughter, that she had never noticed how much it hurt. I opened the door. The room looked just how I left it: a shitload of posters, piles of books and clothes and the desk chair laying on the side. I shuddered at all the girl clothes and quickly left the room again to make my way to the attic.
When I reached it, I realized why Dad had spend so much time there: the walls were full of drawings, so was the ceiling. I always knew that Dad was into art, but this... It was incredible. My jaw dropped when I saw the desk in the middle if the room. There was a pile of sketchbooks on it, also a few pencils and a necklace with a medallion that I had seen on family pictures of Dad's side of the family. I took it one hand, running my thumb over the fine words carved into the silver:

"atramentum scriptorium est crassior sanguis"

I tried to remember what it meant and when my brain finally found the memory in what felt like the asscrack of my memory server, it felt like I could hear Dad's voice again:

"Ink is thicker than blood. Always think about that when you draw someone, Oliver"

Dad was the first one to call me by my preferred name and pronouns and I'm still so thankful. I looked at the medallion again and slowly put it into the pocket of my jeans. After a deep sigh, I opened one of the sketchbooks. It was a comic. The drawings were realistic, not in a comic style. I opened another one, flipping through the pages. Now THIS was comic style. Something about superheroes. I picked up the first one again. A pen was attached to it, with a string. The string was glued onto the first page. There also was a text in the first page. It said:

"Hello Oliver, glad to talk to you again. Let me tell you a secret: these books may seem normal, but there is something odd about them: these little worlds in them, everything drawn onto these pages is like an own little world. I started them after Maria passed away."

I swallowed. Maria was Mom. Was this something about her? I took a deep breath and kept on reading.

"Then, after your sister died, I wanted her to live forever. If you decide to enter these books, which I hope you do..."

What? Enter? How the fuck am I supposed to enter a fucking book? Dad really was insane. But still, I kept on reading.

"...you will meet her and she will know what to do. Just tell her who you are, she'll wait for you in the first book and in every one after that. Now you probably think this is weird and also impossible..."
Yes, Dad, I do.

"...but look at the medallion. You remember the phrase, don't you? Of course you do, you are a smart boy. Say it with me, Oliver, say it out loud: 'Ink is thicker than blood'..."

Without wanting to say it, I said it out loud: "Blood is thicker than water."
I shuddered and almost dropped the book at how loud my voice echoed in the almost empty attic. After taking a deep breath (I had to take a lot of deep breaths in this fucking attic) I focused back on the sketchbook. Dad's handwriting was now getting a little smudged, maybe he had been crying or sweating. I narrowed my eyes and kept on reading.

"You really said it out loud, my good boy, didn't you? Okay, this medallion is your key to the world of my sketchbooks. Trust me. This secret had been held in our family since generations. I will now tell you how to enter the sketchbooks. It is important to be careful otherwise you might be crippled when you enter the book. So take care and take your time to draw your portrait on the first page. You might want to check out the book first, to be sure that you'll fit in. Don't worry about the story though. It won't matter now that you are in there, it'll change."

What the actual fuck is this? Dad never lied to me though, so why should this be fake? I mean, he definitely wasn't mentally healthy, but this was worth a shot. I quickly read the rest of the message.

"Now, that I told you everything you need to know, all I can do, is wish you good luck.
Good luck, son, I am proud of you.
Love, Dad"

So be it.