This notion has existed in my subconscious ever since my 6-year-old self fell into the world of Harry Potter, but it was George Martin who put it so aptly to words: “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one.”

So, yes, the hundreds of books that line my bedroom closet have taught me much about navigating the world; through paper and ink I have learned perspective, I have learned to question everything, I have learned to cling to my beliefs, I have learned the value of forgiveness and the value in admitting I was wrong.

But, more importantly, it is through those same books that I have learned to navigate my own world and my own mind.

At the feet of novels, I have learned the true meaning of courage and inner strength, of resilience. Books have long-enabled me to learn to live with myself and my situation. I cannot be constricted or contained -- to me, that wonderful, simple rectangle of page, ink, and binding is a pathway into a different life.

I have flown fighter jets, fought in the second world war, wielded lightsabers, and learned magic. I have raced cars and laid siege to castle walls -- I am a master swordsman and a master criminal; I am an engineer and a scientist, a politician, and an inventor; an old man facing death and a young man facing life.

I have experienced and lived in all corners of humanity.

My twenty years of life are traced and fed by the thousands of lives that I have witnessed through war and peace, joy and suffering, lives that, though they might exist only on a page, are inexplicably and exceptionally real to me. The shared experiences of every character of every story that I have consumed are as much a part of me as my own experiences, those particular, personal moments that have come to define who I am.

My morals have been tested. My definition of right and wrong has frayed into that gray area that only the best writers reside in, that gray area that is real life.

If I had to condense my library to a single novel, a single story that has brought to me both the greatest enjoyment and most poignant impact, it is Shantaram, by Gregory David Roberts. It is a tale of love and hate, peace and war, honor amid amoral men. It is a story that has inspired me both as a human being, a thinker, a philosopher, and, importantly, as a writer.

I’m afraid to die.

I have sat in this cell for most of my life. Sat with blood on my hands and eyes half closed. The law couldn’t save me. I never had a chance. The gun they used was my gun. My prints were on the trigger. That was enough to get me in the courtroom. They had no other options. It was me, or the man whom everyone had so loved would die unavenged. In blind pursuit of justice, of that fabled, intangible, yearned-after concept of morality, after a trial that lasted no more than three days, the jury convened for twenty-five minutes.

I remember. I had not even risen from the bench before the door swung open and they filed back into the room, their faces full of a grim sort of triumph. That was the day I was sentenced to death.

I will never forget that moment. It lingers, it is haunting, terrifying. It catches you when you least expect it. It grabs you by the shoulder and pinches your flesh. It dances before your vision, it turns your legs to jelly and your mind to mush. To hear that your life has a date of expiration, to hear the zealous confidence, the righteous rage that boiled so near the surface in that jury of my peers. When the gavel banged down, I remember turning to stare, in numb disbelief, at the throngs of people who had come to watch the sentencing. Insults were hurled my way. Fists shook with the glory of justice.

I remember falling to my knees, staring at my cuffed hands, mouthing the words ‘I didn’t do it,’ relentlessly, painfully aware that my mouth had gone paper-dry. I could feel the blood rushing from my face. My head was full of this incessant buzzing. My throat didn’t want to function properly - there was a sharp pain beneath my Adam's apple, the pain that often precedes tears. My neck was flushed. I was having difficulty breathing.

Two pairs of rough hands grabbed me and pulled me to my feet. They dragged me down the courtroom, past dozens of smiling people out through a side door. I remember little more than a blur of faces. I felt a profound disconnect between my mind, my very essence, and my body. I felt both an inordinate amount of freedom as well as a sense of entrapment greater than any I had before experienced. Never before had I felt so imprisoned by my body. This physical caliphate that tied me to life, that tied me to death. I prayed then, for the first time in my life, I prayed a coward’s prayer.

I prayed for one of those viciously joyous people to pull a gun from their back pocket and empty the chamber into my head. I prayed for blood and death. And I prayed for it to happen swiftly. My body was screaming at me, screaming for life. My heart was tearing at my neck, my eyes were staring, sightlessly, yet staring still at the walls that were closing around me. I knew, in that moment, that if I lived another second knowing that I was destined to die in prison, on a table, with a needle in my arm, that I would go mad.

But there were no saints in the crowd that day. No deranged souls capable of committing that heinous act that they claimed I had committed. No one so utterly twisted by their perverted version of justice that they would end it right there, in that courtroom, before the judge.

When they loaded me back in that police cruiser to return to the prison, I begged them, I begged them like a starving dog begs for scraps. I begged them for mercy. I begged them for a bullet. They just laughed and let my words curl out the car window with the smoke from their cigarettes.

When they pulled me from the car, I made my move. I threw myself on one of the officers, tackling him to the ground. My hands were cuffed and chains connected them to the cuffs around my ankles, but I could move enough to get to his gun. I got it midway out of his holster when hands grabbed my shoulders and threw me onto the ground. They beat me then, the two of them. Beat me until my eyes were swollen shut, my lips were split, and I could barely walk. I was a pulp, a raw, bloody sack of flesh. But they didn’t do it. They didn’t answer my prayers. They beat me within an inch of my life but they didn’t end it.

They threw me into my cell - I curled into a ball on the ground and began to cry, like the fool that I was. Because I knew that if they didn’t kill me then, I would have to wait. Death would still come, but it would come slower. The torture, the punishment, that was in the waiting. And any courage I had, any last vestiges of that brave, cowardly readiness for death, it was gone.

I was nineteen.

That was forty years ago. And still, the fear has not abated. It has not lessened even slightly. Perhaps if the life I had led was a full one, perhaps if the life I had led had followed the course it was supposed to follow, I could greet Death with pride, dignity, and acceptance. But I was robbed of my life. Robbed on a lie. Robbed by misplaced justice. I will turn sixty tomorrow. Then I will die. And I am terrified of it. Terrified because I know, in my heart, that God is either a myth, or has neglected us. I know that I will never see again. I will never breathe again. Will never run my fingers along the strings of a guitar, smell the history in the pages of a yellowing book. Never again will I think, never again will there be joy or sorrow or pain. I shall never dream again. Never hold a woman in my arms. I will die the way I have lived. In chains and deprived.

At least I am alone in my cell. Alone like I have always been. Like I will be tomorrow. Like I will be forever. Alone with thoughts that have darkened and soured further every day I have spent within these walls. Alone with the pen and sheaf of paper they gave an old man out of pity for his wasted life. I begged them for it, I begged them and they provided for this one final request. A pen. A real one. A beautiful work of craftsmanship, lines of silver and gold ending in a slanting point with seeping black ink dripping on its felt tip. The paper was old - brittle and yellow - but it would work. I will beg again, before my heart slows to a stop, before the arms of Death take me in. I will beg that they take this stack of paper, this journey of word and heart that is my very soul, and give it away. I will beg them to beg someone to publish it. For my life cannot stop tomorrow. My name cannot disappear tomorrow. I will force myself into a prolonged existence. My name will be uttered, with pity and regret, and people will remember who I am, and all the things that I have not done.

I have not spoken to my Mother or my Father in decades. I was not allowed to attend either of their funerals.

I have never seen an iPhone, or listened to music from after 1977.

I have never driven an automatic.

I have never leapt from an airplane, played cards with my friends, or lost money gambling.

I have never finished college. And so I never got a chance to get that job I wanted, as an editor at a publishing house. I wanted to write books in my free time.

I have never brought a girl home, nor have I ever been in love or been loved. I have never sunk to one knee, holding the hands of the woman who was my entire world, and asked her to marry me. I have never known the joys of a life where I was not alone. Never known the joys of raising a child.

I have never learned to play the violin.

I have never seen Venice, eaten Italian gelato, or ridden on the Tube.

I have never been to sea.

I have never joined the army like I had planned on. Never bled for my country like I so wanted to.

I have never been loved or respected. I have never been anything but a figure of controversy and hate.

And I did not kill Ben Smolsky.

The night he died, I was attacked by a man in a mask. He wore gloves and sunglasses and held a knife to my throat. My life, he said, or the gun that was protruding from the back of my jeans. I turned, let him take the gun. He tipped his hat at me, thanked me, and vanished into the night. I called the police. I told them what had happened. They said they’d send someone to look for the thief. A call they struck from their records when Ben’s body was found the next morning. He was the mayor of our little town. A good man. A kind man. And he was dead. Killed by my gun. But not killed by me. I have no reason to lie. The one thing Death grants you is honesty. I want it known that I am innocent. That you may all have been robbed of your mayor that night, but I was robbed of my entire existence. I want you to read this and to tremble. I want you to shake and scream and cry and beg your god for forgiveness because you have sinned.

I want you to suffer, as I have suffered. I want the guilt to rend your soul from your body. I want you to look at yourself with nothing but scorn and hatred. I want you to feel so acutely every breath, every beat of your heart. Because that is all I have become - an animal who counts every heartbeat. An animal that has been waiting for decades to die. An animal that has lived without hope, the one thing that separates humanity from the rest of the world.

I look out at a gray world between iron bars. If I close my eyes, I can picture beauty. But it is jaded. Because I have never seen it with my own eyes. My image of the world is a collection of movies and pictures. My life was never a life. How I wish I could inflict that on one of you.

They’re here already. The cell door is opening. I can sense freedom. They won’t take the pen from my fingers. I will spill my soul until my hand stops moving. My heart has never beat so fast, so valiantly. My mind is beginning to grow numb again. I have had forty years to find my peace. To accept the inevitability of it all. And I have failed. I never professed to be strong. I always knew I was a coward. But now I know that cowardice is innate to humanity. No man craves death. All men fear it. Yet still men send their brethren to burn. There is a sick sense of irony that subsists within the very concept of morality and justice. It is not lost on me.

My hand is moving feverishly, though my eyes are beginning to blur. I am both cold and warm at the same time. My stomach feels like it has become a bottomless pit. There it is. The altar upon which I shall fall. Faster, faster, faster. I will not go soft. I will not go easy. I will be the most foolishly courageous coward there has ever been.

The moment is gone. I am on the table. Writing though I cannot see the words I am scrawling onto the page. I can see people watching through the glass. A needle punches into my arm. I’ve always hated the sight of blood. There it goes, the anesthetic. Strange, weightlessness. I feel like I’m falling.

Maybe I -

I don’t want this. I feel like a boy again, though I am old by most standards, old and shrivelled and gray and moments from forever.

I am afraid.

The shadows were lengthening beneath the torches that guttered in the breeze. Still the king had not returned. The Mother was sitting in a hard-backed oaken chair, absentmindedly twirling a thin knife between her fingers. Moments stretched into long minutes of anxious silence. She raised a black-gloved hand, flicking two of her fingers with the slightest creak of leather.

Though she did not turn her head, the sounds of light footfalls reached her ears, almost masked by the blowing of the wind. She imagined seeing little tufts of grass flatten as a shadow passed over them and smiled slightly at the thought.

The footsteps ceased. She could feel a presence above her, looming. Waiting.

“It is time, Alaria, to blow out the candle. They will be returning soon. Be ready.”

“But she. She’ll - ”

“She knows the price of service. This must be done. Shall I ask another, or can you take care of this for me?”

“It will be done, Mother.”

Alaria bowed, allowing her knees to bend, before she took her leave, slipping through the thick canvas flaps that looked black under the guise of night. She walked from the tent with a dark purpose in her stride, unstringing her longbow as she did so. The black arrows with their gray fletching hid in the folds of darkness. And her cloak marked her as an agent; heads turned away and eyes burrowed into the ground as she passed.

She crested a low, grassy ridge, and walked along it, until her back was pressed against a great oak tree that stood sentinel to the forest dregs behind it.

She waited. Minutes stretched into hours and still the night was silent, the shadows unbroken. She flexed her fingers, pulled a deep breath of air into her lungs, laid an arrow on the string, shifted her feet, straightened her back.

She heard them before she saw them, the pounding of hooves, muffled by the thick grassy carpet that stretched underfoot. But the thudding was drawing steadily closer. Judging by the slight cloud of dust that hung in the night, they had passed the picket line; it had to be them.

Alaria stepped out from the tree, drawing the bowstring back until the fletching brushed her ear. The limbs of the longbow creaked with the strain. She could almost hear the bow screaming in protest as she held the shot, waiting. Her breath was smooth and slow, her hands unwavering, her back trained to hold that position for many long hours.

Three heads appeared beyond a small hill several hundred meters away. They were drawing nearer. Alaria focused her vision on the three riders, dismissing the man that rode in the middle, as well as the woman that rode to his right. But the woman who rode to his left, whose brown hair had come loose from its bun while she was riding, was coming into range.

They dipped out of sight again, and Alaria relaxed the tension on the bow, keeping her breathing constant and measured. The heads angled up out of the recession, followed quickly by shoulders and torsos and horses. Alaria pulled back a little more, tracked the shot, closed her eyes, took in a deep breath, then released the arrow with her breath.

Before the arrow had hit its mark, another was already on its way. The shrieking of frogs and the hooting of owls, the growling of cats and the rustling in the underbrush hid the speeding hum of rushing death until it was upon them.

Rian’s head snapped up as the sound slid around his ears. It was a sound he recognized, a sound that had ingrained fear into his mind, a sound that was always accompanied by death. The humming was deep but rapid; an arrow, he knew, in the seconds before it struck its mark. His stallion, sensing his fear, snorted and reared, giving vent to a neighing roar as he did so. But the sound was unable to overcome another sound, one far quieter and far more terrifying.

The thud of an arrow sliding through cloth and leather and halting in flesh. The soft gasp of surprise more than pain at the burning that laced along her chest and into her fingertips, lighting up her brain. The second whistling and another thud. Another gasp, this time more of resignation than anything else. The brown mare whinnied as her rider slid sideways from the saddle. The animal reared, eyes rolling in fear, and bolted, sending a cloud of dust rising into the darkness.

Rian turned frantically, his eyes wide. The blood had fled his face quicker than water falls from open fingers, leaving behind a sickly pasty white that crept along his cheeks until his eyes stood out starkly. The reins fell against the stallion’s neck, his fingers numbed from shock, too numb to grip anything.

The world felt frozen. Time ceased to be. Sound was reaching his ears muffled and sluggish, everything around him looked to be blurred, streaked, as though an artist had swept a stroke of water over top of the paint. His lungs burned and he was mildly surprised to find that he had stopped breathing. A sound reached his ears, battling through his shield of terror and denial, and registered in his brain. A sound so dim, so soft, that his heart leapt into his throat.

Adrenaline flooded his veins and he kicked his feet free from the stirrups and vaulted over the side of the great stallion, his feet slamming into the ground so that the impact sped up his legs and smashed into his knees. He didn’t react. He took two great strides forward and sank onto his knees, entirely ignorant of the damp that was spreading through his breeches.

His scarred, bearded, terrified face swam over hers, and a slight smile touched the corners of her mouth. Her hand found his and his heart seemed to explode at her evident lack of strength. He turned to find the other one, her name had vanished from his mind, but that was not important right now.

“Go!” he screamed, a red, raw scream that tore like blades at his throat. “Get someone, anyone,” the shout had died, choked into a sob, “help,” his voice was nearly lost.

Andrea looked down at the two, clustered on the ground, and cracked the reins across her mount’s neck, sending the animal into a driving gallop into the camp. The beautiful white stallion had walked off and begun to graze on a stretch of grass nearby. Sabina’s horse had vanished.

The silence was oddly worse than the subtle sounds that had existed there before. The sounds of harried breathing, of animals snorting, of cloaks rustling, they had vanished, and the sounds of Sabina dying seemed to increase a hundred-fold.

Through the dim, Rian could make out the two arrows, with black shafts and gray fletching, that protruded from her chest. They were no more than three inches apart. The heavy broadheads had punched through her thin leather armor the way a hot knife slides through butter, and her ribcage had provided little resistance after that. The arrowheads were just barely protruding between her shoulder blades, where two thin lines of blood were tracing their way down her cloak.

Her front was washed in red. With every heaving, scraping pull of blessed oxygen into those pierced lungs, the blood welled a little faster, pooling around the already soaked shafts and pouring down her chest where it collected in her lap, soaking into her clothes, dribbling onto the grass. The smell of metal was in the air, barely enough to mask the smell of fear.

Rian cradled her pale face in his hands, staring into her eyes as though he had never quite seen before now. Her hand lifted from where it rested at her side and travelled slow, as though the air itself was molasses, until her fingertips rested against the burn that dominated the left side of his face.

“Rian,” she said, in a choking gasp that was hardly more than a whisper lost to the wind.

A bubble of blood grew at the corner of her mouth as she spoke and burst when her lips stopped moving, scattering splotches of red across her porcelain cheeks. His throat had become a burning, piercing circle of pain, as though a flaming knife had been thrust under his jaw. He clenched his teeth to stop the chattering, barely reacted when his eyes began to burn, sending a few thick tears falling over his lids and sliding down his nose, where they fell upon her forehead with a gentle tap. Tap, tap. Tap.

“Rian,” she said again, this time with even less strength.

He held her chilled hand against his cheek and bent his head over her lips. With a groan that sounded horribly like blades churning through a thick, viscous liquid, she pulled her head closer to his ear, and began to whisper to him.

“I’m not who you want me to be,” her voice was a death rattle; his body didn’t feel like his own. “I’m not what I wish I was,” her words struck him but fell away, unable to penetrate the growing cloud of despair that hung over him. “I think you know this,” her lips were hardly moving. “But I’ve loved you. With all that I am, I’ve loved you.” His tears began to fall in earnest, and she smiled, a sad little smile. “Don’t cry, my king, I’m not afraid to die. I am a part of you, now. Remember. Ri-” her voice broke like water crashing upon stone, his name, half-spoken, resting on her dead lips.

A long sigh replaced the whispers, a sigh that wrapped its icy fingers around his heart, a sigh that seemed to linger on the wind, eliciting a fresh storm of tears from the King. He shook as grief washed over him, racking his chest, flooding his lungs, blinding his eyes.

Her head fell back. Her body was suddenly limp. He laid her on the ground tenderly, and brushed a rough hand against her eyes, closing the lids. He knelt over her then and pressed his lips to her own. He kissed her like he had never kissed her before, like he should have kissed her a thousand times, pulling on her cold, blue lips, some part of him believing, however foolishly, that she would kiss him back. But she did not move. He eventually pulled away, his hands shaking violently, staring at the pale, bloody face that looked more at peace now than he had ever seen it in life.

Her hair was fanned out around her head, making her face seem small. He gripped a handful of his sleeve and began to brush it, ever so gently, against her cheeks, cleaning the blood from her mouth. In his chest, he could feel a gaping hole where his heart used to be, a black pit of grief and pain that sent a constant storm of lances throughout his body, so that his fingers ached and his toes, and his legs cramped and felt ghostly, as though they belonged to someone else. His senses were dulled, he had gone deaf on some level, blind on another. His throat burned and seared, but now with the feeling of ice so cold it burned something fierce. The tears had stopped, though his eyes were still damp and bloodshot. And his chest still heaved, rising up and down in rapid, uncertain bursts, his breath coming in quick tugs and sudden releases. His head shook slightly, like he was trying fervently to hold something between his ears.

He tried to swallow and found he was unable to. His throat had ceased to work. His fingers clawed at his throat as though he were suffocating, leaving long lines of red in the flesh where his nails dug in deep. He fell to his back, his body no longer able to support itself. His knees were folded awkwardly beneath his torso, but he could not feel the pain in his knees and his thighs as they bent. He turned to his side and began to rock, slowly at first, then rapidly, his mind forcing his body to move because his mind had become hell, a hell that could comprehend naught but her death.

The rocking subsided, the shaking stopped. But the piercing in his throat remained. His eyes snapped open, dry but still red. The pupils were dilated so that the deep cobalt blue was little more than thin rims circling the mass of black. He pushed himself to his knees; tilted his head back so that he stared unabashedly at the gaping maw of the sky.

He screamed.

Rain began to fall as the sound rolled off his lips like thunder, ripping apart his throat. The sound was a bestial, guttural cry; an explosion of pure grief that had transmuted into burning, fiery rage. The cry carried on until his lungs pressed against his chest and the base of his throat seemed anchored by his lungs, pushing down and piercing from a lack of air. When the cry died off his lips he did not move. Nor when the rain began to fall in thick curtains. He was entirely unfeeling. Rain plastered his hair to his face, soaked his clothes and ran down his nose, falling off his ears and pooling on the ground where he knelt.

Still, he did not move.

His mind was a cavity of pain, a pain far worse than physical torture. He longed for blades, for fire. It would have been easier to handle than this. This was a thousand, minute blades rending his flesh from his bones, burrowing into and through his skull, cutting his lungs into ribbons, carving his still-beating heart from his chest and holding it before his face. Like boiling, molten rock being poured into his veins, like ice freezing against his bare skin until the digits fell away, like his face dragging against a jagged stone, like being chained at the bottom of a shallow pool so that he could see the surface, see it, but never reach it. Like icy water flooding his lungs and his brain, like fire tracing its way along his legs, burning his skin from his bones, melting his eyeballs and boiling his brain and heart, like nails being thrust into his wrists, forcing him to hang until death claimed him, like a thick, rawhide rope fastening around his neck and squeezing off air, like a great beast consuming him, like a beheading with a blunt sword.

But worse. A thousand times worse. Because he was drowning without the relief that was death. He was burning without the prospect of nothingness. Every second was a knife that ripped through his body, until his skin felt like little more than tatters hanging onto charred bones by thin, bloody threads. His body ached as his mind raged and swirled and stormed, until the physical pain that mirrored his grief grew numb.

He longed for death. He longed for an end to the suffering. He was tired; utterly spent, wrung out and beaten. He found his eyes closing and didn’t try to fight it.

Then he was falling, falling into an endless abyss. Falling for what felt like days, weeks, years. The pit had walls, and they grew nearer to him every second, great, slimy black walls, like the throat of some queer creature. But there was no floor. Nothing that would stop the falling, end the fear, shatter his spine and crush his body into a pulp.

At length, a light appeared, far distant. It grew gradually, into a roaring plume of orange flame, spitting red sparks and sending a column of smoky heat on ahead of it. The great burst of flame opened like a wide mouth, swallowing Rian as he flew into it, washing him in a world of perennially growing heat that melted his armor into his flesh and set his hair afire, heat that turned his eyes into jellied pulps that streamed down his cheeks.

The tunnel of fire turned all at once into black water, water that made his skin clammy and freezing cold, water that ran up his nose and flooded his brain, water that fled down his throat and settled in his stomach and his lungs. His throat burned worse than ever, his stomach bulged, his forehead bulged, his empty eye sockets streamed. The water vanished.

The walls grew even closer, until he scraped against them as he slid down, rending his skin from his body in great bloody expanses of rock. The jagged, slimy rock sprouted thousands of prickly protrusions of steel in perfectly winding circles that tore what remained of Rian’s corpse into tiny shreds.

Every second the pain mounted. And since he was dreaming, he found he was unable to evade it. Death would not come. Sleep could not save him. His body could not numb him. He felt everything.

The walls vanished. His world became a pit once more. A face began to dance before him, then it multiplied, until a thousand and then ten thousand images of this face shimmered in front of his mangled eyes. He was unable to look away, unable to drown it out. Sabina stared at him, the hard look in her dark eyes accusatory. Blood was splattered against her pale cheeks; red lines traced from her nostrils.

“You could have saved me,” she said, though her lips did not move, and every face that stared at Rian spoke the words at the same time, creating a ringing echo that grated against his ears and pounded into his head.

The faces vanished. Thunder roared. It didn’t stop. It sounded louder and louder until Rian thought his skull would rupture from the sound. He glanced down. A floor had finally appeared. There was a single, thick black spike protruding from its center. He was hurtling toward it, unable to stop himself, unsure if he wanted to.

He seemed to speed up. The ground rose to meet him.

----------------------------------

This is an excerpt from a fantasy epic I wrote entitled "The Blood King." It has a word count of 167,000 and is targeted toward adult lovers of fantasy. My name is Ian Krietzberg; I am a sophomore at the College of New Jersey where I am the Managing Editor at our newspaper, the Signal. I have been freelance writing for more than a year, and have been published in the Wall Street Journal, Two Story Melody, Patch, and Screen Rant, in addition to my collegiate newspaper.

I have been a voracious reader, specifically of fantasy, from the age of 6, when I first picked up Harry Potter. I still read that series once a year (and have read it more than twenty times in total), while also plowing through a number of other novels; Game of Thrones, The Witcher, The Bourne Trilogy, David Baldacci, Pat Conroy, Shantaram -- the list really does go on; I have a personal bedroom library that numbers at close to 500 books.

My writing style is descriptive rather than abstract. It is dark and violent, but the twist I like to take is one that explores poignancy -- that is something that I examined quite a lot in the hundreds of pages that make up this particular book: so often, war is portrayed, both on the screen and page, as a dark place, but a place where soldiers do what they are expected -- they kill and they kill, over and over, numbly. Through my protagonist, it takes a long time for him to develop that numbness, and he never quite latches onto the belief that killing is ever justified, something I found interesting to explore for a character who eventually leads an army in civil war.

The basic premise of my novel: Rian Baylor escaped a life as a slave and found freedom in a new home, an ocean away. But when that home is razed around him, he wants vengeance. He sets out in pursuit of blood and instead finds love, war, and suffering. A girl draws him back to his homeland, where he discovers a secret organization of warriors and manipulators who have tweaked the strings of fate to bring him home, to lead in the same vein of his ancestors, to continue the line of Baylor, the Blood King.

It is a character-driven story that explores manipulation and betrayal, love and its facade, mortality and courage and will.

It is a story that was both immensely enjoyable, yet unexplainable painful to write, particularly this excerpt above. It is something that is close to my heart, in that it is a genre that I love, told in a way that I would love to read.

"Where do we go when the lights turn off?"

The boy was small, and innocence was etched into his smooth face with those wide, bright eyes and that easy smile. Though now, his mouth was hanging open slightly; the question was an honest one.

The man he was speaking to smiled, an old, tired smile, and fell slow to one knee.

"On," he said simply.

"On where?"

The boy would not be detterred.

A faraway look entered the man's pale blue eyes, and for a moment, a flash of fear flitted across his wrinkled face. But he fixed his smile, gripped the boys shoulders, and stared deep into his eyes.

"On to a place where the sun shines everbright upon our shoulders. To a place with great, sweeping mountains and angry oceans. Waterfalls and soaring castles made of glass."

"That's not an answer, popop!"

"It is a fool who says he knows all. A wise man who knows he knows nothing. See, I don't know where we go. I don't know if you'll go to the same place I go, or if there is a place at all. You'll find some men who fear it, that darkness. Just remember something, if it ever frightens you too terribly."

The boy giggled as he fidgeted, bending his knees and swinging his arms back and forth.

"I don't know if I can," he said, laughing.

The old man tousled his hair and dug deep in his pockets, pulling out a matchbook. He peeled a matchstick from the book and held it aloft.

"Look, look close now. Tell me, what do you see?"

"A match," the boy's attention was fading; his laughter banishing his curiosity.

"Close your eyes. Go on, now. No peeking."

The boy pressed his little dimpled palms against his eyes, sticking his tongue out as he fidgeted.

The old man scraped the match against the book. There was a spark, then a flame. He could feel the heat sliding toward his veined hands.

"Look," he said.

The boy's eyes flickered open, and he stared at the little flame that fizzled on the end of the matchstick.

"Light," he said. "The shadows are frightening for one reason and one reason only." He pursed his lips, cocked his head. "I seem to have forgotten the reason. Do you have it?"

The boy started laughing again, even as his grandfather fished in his ear for a tiny, folded piece of paper. He made a show of unravelling the square of paper, amid racous laughter, then cleared his throat.

"Aha," he said. "We don't know what the shadows hold. But if you cast a little light into the darkness, it flees. It will always flee. Don't wonder where we go when the lights fade. Just make sure that the lights don't fade."

The boy's eyes had gone even wider, if that was possible. He had some inkling that he had just received some great knowledge, yet still knew that he did not understand it. The old man rose to his feet and lit another match, holding it to the cigar he had left on the table beside him.

"You be good, now," he said, smiling around the big cigar. But it was a sad smile, a smile that left his eyes distant and lifeless, something that would haunt the boy in years to come.

The boy simply watched on, somehow stunned into silence, as the old man strode down the hall without so much as a backward glance, opened the door, and vanished into the night.

Seven

Seven days to bare my soul.

Six

Six days to hide the fear.

Five

Five more nights that I refuse to close my eyes.

Four

Four days left of bitter, wasted breath.

Three

Three more days and I’m frozen, staring at the clock,

the hands that refuse to stop.

Two

Two more days. I’m starting to wish I never was.

One

One day. Can you hear it?

The silence?

I start to scream. I won’t die quiet.