The World Towers

Chapter 1 - Blank

[God has spoken.]

What was this? What was happening?

[Your world will be tested.]

Where was this voice coming from? God? What does it mean by God?

[Survive. Live. Thrive. So deems your God.]

Silence. And then screams.

                                             *                                  *                                 *

He woke up to darkness.

Survive. Live. Thrive. The words kept pounding in his head, inducing echoes of pain that would likely lead to a headache later on.

He groaned, annoyed at his disrupted sleep. The sheets were soft beneath him and the covers a warmth that pleasantly protected him from the room's chill.

He rose up on the bed, yawning lazily as he tried to remember where he was. It was too dark to see anything beyond the dim movements of his own body, so he pushed the covers, feet reaching for the floor. The moment he felt cold marble, lights shone around the room, blinding him. Eyes blinking, he tried to make his surroundings in-between white spots.

A large bed with heavy green pillows and covers. A windowless room with marble flooring and beige walls. A comfortable sofa, two cozy couches and a small table in their midst. It was a very nice room. Wooden drawers with odd, elegant engravings. Fur carpets in bright greens and dark blues. Silver frame for the mirror. Dark gold for the paintings.

A really, really nice room. He didn't recognize any of it.

Where was he? How did he come here? Why wasn't he back in... back in--

Back in where? Where was he before this?

He came up with a blank. He couldn't remember. What was he doing yesterday? What was outside this room? What did other people look like?

Blank. Blank. Blank.

What did he look like?

In a panic, he ran toward the tall silver-framed mirror. A young man in his late teens or early twenties greeted him. A man with black skin and long white hair. Someone built lean and athletic, with handsome features. Someone in a well-worn grey nightgown and loose pants.

He touched his face. Who was this?

"I..." he started and abruptly stopped. Was that what he sounded like?

He couldn't remember. Blank. Blank. Blank.

He stepped back from the mirror, hating the stranger in its reflection.

There had to be something he could remember. There had to be.

His family? His name? His memories? Anything at all?

He fell to the carpeted floor, defeated.

Blank. Blank. Blank. No memories. No family. No name.

There was nothing. Just empty space where his memories should have been.

He rubbed his temples. The headache returned with a vengeance.

A semi-transparent screen popped up in front of him.

Surprised, he stared at the illusory rectangle with writing on it.

Weird squiggles and lines on a neat font. He didn't recognize the symbols. He couldn't read the writing.

He laughed, self-deprecating. He received a magical alarm, and he couldn't even read it! Could he read at all?

A sudden thought came to mind. He could speak! He had spoken before.

"I can speak," he slowly annunciated. The motions familiar on his tongue. The sounds foreign to his ears. What language was that? The only reason he even knew what he had said was because he knew what he was about to say.

"I can speak," he repeated and the misery returned tenfold. He had no idea what syllables he had pronounced, what accent he had spoken, or even in how many words the form of his intentioned meaning was. He had said sounds. They were meant to make sense. He didn't know how.

You weren't supposed to have this level of disconnection between speaking and thought. He knew that. How did he know that?

How did he know anything?

He sat there for a long time trying to understand what was happening to him. No answers came. His headache grew and screens appeared twice more before he decided to explore the outside.

He opened the heavy, wooden doors, finding them surprisingly light. What greeted him was a large hall. The space alone easily eclipsed his room, with granite walls and stone floors. Tall, majestic columns held an even more majestic ceiling far above him.

The place was strangely empty; the only furniture being a small throne-like chair, chiseled from grey stone. The bedroom was placed closer to the throne and as he closed the door behind him, he noticed that it faded in the background as if part of the walls.

A hidden door?

He sat on the chair, a bit weirded out as it faced opposite the tall metallic gates at the other end. If the spacious hall was majestic, then the gates were plain intimidating. They were easily the most luxurious thing in the room, with bejeweled ornaments and elegant incisions of silver and white gold.

A small shiver of cold as something hard and metallic formed in his hand. A simple knife with a dark wooden handle had appeared in his hands. He stared at it. So, objects could appear out of thin air too?

Noises came beyond the hall. He strained his ears to hear them. The sound of heavy steps and intelligible voices rested just beyond the gates.

He stared at the knife that had appeared with such a coincidental timing.

Multiple screens popped up in front of him. He ignored them in favor of covering his ears as the sound of screeching metal against stone made way across the hall. The gates were slowly being pushed open to reveal three humanoid figures dressed in leather and metal.

A new screen popped up before him. With no time to think about why, his breath shattered as he recognized one of the words.

[... Survive ...]