Kyran’s head whipped around.

The scream cut off quickly, but he was sure it had come from the right, from Layton’s Crossing. The decayed bridge at the city’s derelict centre had been its main thoroughfare before the river dried up. These days, the bridge and the surrounding blocks were forgotten relics, largely abandoned—except by the poorest—and a prime hotspot of criminal activity.

He started towards the bridge. Then he stopped, hesitating as the voice of cold reason intruded. What are you doing? You have an exam to prepare for, remember? Could he afford to become embroiled in another’s problems? He had precious little time left, but…

He stopped thinking. He would deal with the consequences later. Kyran raced to the source of the scream. He rounded the corner and stopped short, taking in the scene before him. On the bridge ahead, two figures struggled with a young woman.

The woman was well-dressed in a brown leather coat, green dress, stockinged feet, and high heels. She wore her jewellery openly and carried an expensive handbag. It was probably her display of money that had attracted the muggers. Kyran wondered what such an obviously wealthy young lady was doing on these streets.

The muggers, typical of the residents of this part of the city, were clothed in ragged castoffs. One yanked on the woman’s bag. The other tried to restrain her while waving a rusty knife in her face.

It had remarkably little effect. Heedless of the threatening knife, she fought furiously—and in Kyran’s view, somewhat foolishly—to retain her handbag.

Kyran paused, thoughts racing. He could charge in and attempt to disarm the attackers, but he didn’t fancy his chances. While he had been in his fair share of tussles, he was no fighter, and he knew the desperate lengths to which hunger drove one.

If he ran in, he was likely as not to get them both stabbed—or worse. He on his own was not going to deter the muggers. But a larger and more commonplace threat might.

He pulled out his phone and waved it at the struggling figures. “Hey! Leave her alone, the police are on the way!” Kyran’s cry startled the muggers. They looked up in surprise, which turned into fear as they digested the sense of his words. His bluff worked—never mind that the police did not bother responding to calls from this neighbourhood.

The muggers frantically extricated themselves. In his haste to get away, the knife-wielder shoved the woman aside. She stumbled backwards, arms flailing and teetering perilously close to the bridge’s crumbling rails. As she tried to regain her balance, at the exact wrong moment, the heel of her shoe stuck in the cracked road. With a scream, she toppled over.

Helplessly, Kyran watched her fall. Dodging the fleeing muggers, he flew to where she went over. He jarred to a halt at the rails and looked over. He expelled a pent-up breath. The woman lived.

She clung onto the lower end of the bridge’s rusted handrails with a white-knuckled grip. Reacting without thought, Kyran stretched over the rail and grasped her arms. “Here, I got you! Hold tight!”

“Please, please help!” she begged, her eyes wide and mouth trembling. Kyran didn’t think she spoke to him though. Her panicked gaze was lost and unseeing.

The woman twisted and kicked her legs, straining for purchase. Her struggles did her no good. Suddenly weakened hands slipped free of the rails as her adrenaline-fuelled strength drained away.

Kyran was jerked forward against the rail. He gasped as his breath forcibly exhaled and the woman’s full weight had transferred to him. Despite the pain surging up his arms and the cruel pull of gravity, Kyran held on—barely—to both the woman and his footing on the bridge.

Already overwrought, she became frenzied. Mindlessly, she clawed at Kyran. His own position was now also precarious. He heaved, straining to pull her back onto the bridge, but her struggles made that impossible.

“Easy, I got you. I promise,” he said soothingly. His words fell on deaf ears. His own panic surged as he realised he might die here—that they both might—if he could not calm her. “Settle down! Or we will both go over!”

Kyran’s words penetrated and some of her panic receded. Wide-eyed, she stared at Kyran and registered his presence at last. “What is your name?” he asked, through half-gritted teeth, struggling to retain his hold.

“Sara!” she gasped. “I’m Sara.”

“It will be alright, Sara,” he wheezed between heaving breaths. “Try to grab onto the handrails again.”

But even as he spoke, he realised it was too late. His grip on her sweat-drenched arms slipped, and she slid lower, placing the bottom-end of the bridge cruelly out of the reach of her grasping hands. Sara gazed imploringly at Kyran and pleaded, “No, no, help!”

He was overextended. His feet were barely grounded. His face reddened and the tendons on his neck stood out as he tried to heave Sara onto the bridge again. But it was no use. He lacked the leverage. As it was, it took everything he had to maintain his hold.

I can’t do this, he thought with sinking dread. He lacked the mass to anchor them both. And as inch by inch, his footing on the bridge failed, he realised, he too would die here. The physics was inescapable. Unless he let Sara go.

He refused to accept the possibility and stubbornly maintained his death grip. This is my fault! he berated himself. If he hadn’t startled the muggers—

Gravity won. And with hands still clasped, Kyran and Sara plummeted off the bridge.

✽✽✽

Kyran’s mind blanked, strangled to silence by icy coils of terror. The drop to the riverbed below was a long one, and he fell more than half the distance before his mind unfroze. No, he wailed. My life can’t end like this.

There were so many things he had left undone, so much left unsaid. Too soon, he despaired. But it was too late. He watched the ground, dry sun-baked earth, rush closer. The fall would be fatal. Brimming with dread, he squeezed his eyes shut and waited.

And waited…

No end came. Agony did not ripple through his body. He did not smash into unyielding earth. Confounded, Kyran opened his eyes and stared uncomprehendingly. Two mangled corpses lay in the riverbed. That’s us, he thought, recognizing his blue backpack and Sara’s brown coat amongst the remains. But that did not make sense. If that was them down there… How am I? Kyran looked down at himself.

And stared at translucent hands. His hands.

They were clasped to Sara’s, equally transparent. Through them he could see the ground, not clearly, but hazily—as though he looked through a shimmering curtain—yet he saw through his hands.

What am I?

He tore his gaze away from his hands and peered about. He hung suspended mid-air. A bodiless spirit. Was he a ghost? he wondered. He looked at Sara. Her eyes were squeezed shut and her face stricken. She seemed unaware of their strange state.

He shifted his gaze back to the surroundings. All else looked the same. Normal. Except for the ghostly remains of him and Sara floating beneath the bridge. What is going on? he wondered. What happened?

He considered himself. He was dead, or at least some part of him was, while another part—his soul? —remained aware. I should be terrified, he thought, yet he felt little. His emotions were dulled as if remnants of his former life, something recalled but not felt. Why was he not panicking? Was he not himself?

I feel like me. I still think I am me. But…can I be me when my body lies down there?

He pondered this. Whether for a minute or an eternity he wasn’t sure. His sense of time, like his emotions, was absent. No answers were forthcoming. What now?

He looked around, baffled. There was no use staying here and waiting for something to happen. It was time to venture out and search for answers elsewhere.

He tugged at his hands and tried to extricate them from Sara’s, but her grip was too firm. He glanced at her again. Her eyes were still shut. Should he ask her along? But could they even communicate? How do I talk without a body?

Invisible tongues of fire spun around his limbs and shot spikes of agony up his arms and legs. What—? he had a moment to think before coherent thought fled. Kyran thrashed as he was consumed by returning sensation. At first, he thought he was back in his body and that the pain he felt was from his mangled limbs. That, somehow, he was still alive. He almost welcomed the pain then. But no, a half-caught glimpse showed that he was still a bodiless spirit.

The tendrils spread and encased him fully. It dawned on him then that the fiery burning was not sensation returned—or not only. It was part of an outside force that was shackling him. And he was being pulled, he realised. Forcibly upwards.

He struggled, frantic to escape. Whatever the alien force that held him was, he did not want to be helpless within its grasp.

Despite his efforts, he was relentlessly dragged, a fish on a line. Gradually at first, then faster and faster. He accelerated through the empty skies, powerless to prevent himself being reeled in.

The world rushed by, then the moon and the planets. Then the stars, and more stars. Then blackness, an endless void.

And then, he knew no more.

✽✽✽

Eld hovered over Layton Bridge and watched the tragedy unfold. He tasted the Spark’s name in his mind—Kyran Seversan—and was pleased by the sense he received of the young man. The boy has matured well, he thought.

So much depended on him. And at long last, the Spark had been pulled into the Game—where Eld was powerless to act. From this point on, Kyran was on his own.

It is up to you now, Kyran, thought Eld. Forgive me for the fate to which I have sentenced you. I hope you will succeed where I have failed.