Atlas

2

The room I walked into was beautiful. It looked to be a gallery of art, statues and paintings of myths from long ago. The ceiling towered above me, several stories taller than the motel I had walked to. A very large statue of what looked to be an angel with black wings stood in the front, glowering over everything in the room. Except for one spot on the floor in front of it, a place that glowed with an ethereal lightness. There was a boy sitting in that spot, a boy that I also knew. He was looking at a painting on the wall in front of him. It was a horrid thing to look at in actuality, a violent splash of red and anger. In one part of the painting, a boy with wings fell to his death.

The boy on the floor lazily turned his head to me, a childish smile on his face.

"Don't go to Room 13," Namjoon said. "The girl there wants you dead."

I think that should have alarmed me, but it didn't. For some reason, it sounded like something you are told every day.

Behind the angel, there were two large doors.

"Then I suppose I should avoid that room," I said. "Which door should I go through?"

He looked at the doors like he had never seen them before, then shrugged. "Where do you want to go?"

I didn't know where I wanted to go. I didn't even know what I was doing in that strange building. I told Namjoon as much.

"Then it doesn't matter which door you go through," he said. Still, he raised one hand, which allowed me to see that he also had thin gold ropes around his wrists, the wire leading somewhere I couldn't see. He pointed at one of the doors, the one behind the angel's right wing, and I went through that door.