What Lies Between ✔

Introductions are in Order

* Chapters have been shortened for you guys :)

Hey, I just wanted to inform whoever chooses to read this (THANK YOU) that this is a prologue which sets up the story and provides background and context for the world Nameless is in. If you want to jump right into the story, move along to chapter 1 :) I appreciate whoever takes the time to read this story, it means a lot to me!

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Prologue

Bland. Colorless. Dull.

These are the words I would have used to describe my life.

Excuse me - perhaps I should rephrase that. To describe my existence, for existing is the only thing I did then. Of course, no one truly alive was aware of my pitiful existence since I had never truly lived to begin with.

Confusing? Let me explain.

I suppose what I would be called is a soul. An imprisoned soul. My home was a place some people don't believe in or do not understand. It was a place of redemption and a place of abandon. A place that determines the essence of the soul, be it good or evil. It is a place where the Between roam.

Purgatory.

Purgatory is bleak. It is a crude mimic of life, of the earth the souls used to walk. However, there are no roads, no houses, and no cars. There is merely - in the only way I can describe it for any human to understand - a giant, endless land the restless spirits meditate and wander in.

Yes there are paths, but the stones are the dullest of black. Yes there is grass, but it is the faintest of grey, so much so that you could mistake it for white. There is also water, but it's still to the touch and if you were to dip your hand into it you would feel nothing. Not warmth, not coolness, not moisture; just nothing. The wind - or what is a shroud version of it - is something you cannot feel, nor can you hear it. It only makes its presence known by the lifting of your hair and the soundless swaying of the ash colored trees. There is also no sun in Purgatory. The utter white of the sky that surrounds us is blinding enough.

Throughout the unbounded land, there is only a single white building that stands alone. This building is called The Arx. It is a plethora of multiple sized squares, their placement seeming to be haphazard, as if adding a structure in Purgatory was an afterthought to the creator... whoever that was. It includes the Council Chamber, the filing room that contains the eternal documents of the Between, the twenty-one bedchambers for all the Seekers and the Lord, The Lord's chamber, and finally the lifeline of my existence, the Compendium.

The Compendium is filled with a legion of documentation on human life and the profiles of every single human being come to Purgatory. Each profile listed the subject under a rank according to their level of sin,ranging from A to D, and they were updated regularly to report their progress. I was not allowed access to those files, but I was forgotten enough to be able to sneak into the Right Wing of the Compendium, where the books were stored.

For a long while, I dared not go in even an arm's length of The Arx, for fear that I would be punished for it. However, eventually I learned there was an advantage to being practically invisible. The Level Twos do not bother themselves with the profiling of the Between, and no other Level cared about me. I had no idea why it was so important to keep track of who exactly showed up in Purgatory, or what kind of filing system they followed, but what I knew from all of my time in that realm is that such business was left to the Level Fours, the Level low enough to dump the work onto and experienced enough to do it.