Keeper of the Lost Cities: Unlocked: A Fan-fiction

Prologue: Keefe

Darkness.

Deep.

Bottomless.

Without end.

Keefe didn't know how long he had been there. Didn't know how much longer he would.

He didn't know how it could, but the darkness blinded him, filling him with a pain that felt so, so real. But somehow, Keefe knew it wasn't. He could tell, though he didn't know how, that the pain was an illusion of his own mind. An explanation for the horrible feelings he couldn't explain.

The darkness called to him, embracing him.

And he was tired. So, so tired. All he wanted to do was lay down and sleep forever.

But whenever he felt like giving in, felt like letting go and sinking and drowning in that pit of hopeless dark, his mind drudged up the one thing he could never forget. The one thing in his life that was worth fighting for. The one thing that always brought him back to the light. The one thing that had held him together through every bump, high and low.

Sophie.

And every time he thought that beautiful word, his mind shrunk back from the dark, away from the illusion of pain, away from the evil, away from the ocean of betrayal and night and monsters that were his past and future.

His mind flashed to the last thing she had told him. Sleep now. I'll still be here. He knew how strongly she had meant that. He knew she would always be there for him. She always had. And that thought pulled him back, every time.

Sophie.

Sophie.

Sophie.

I'll still be here.