CHAPTER 1 PARALLEL
Ravenhill was a small town surrounded by mountains and valleys on all side. The families, the houses, the shops, everything had been there for centuries. Seldom anyone came to live in this town from the wide world outside. In past many decades, there had been only one time when someone came to take shelter in this peace loving town.
It was a quiet night just like every night in Ravenhill when a man had came running in the town with his five year old daughter. And the kind and loving people of the town took them in as if it was their own lost puppy returning back to them.
One would expect that the population of town would have died if no one from outside came to live there. However, such was the magic that the town held, rarely anyone left the town. Sometimes, young people did for education but they always came back. Who could have left a town like Ravenhill, where the crime rate was non existent. Where life was so peaceful and carefree, where the whole town was a big family. People who had lived their whole life in the confines of Ravenhill often found the world outside it too fast paced and selfish.
It was in this town that night that a stranger stumbled in with a hood over his head. The person limped along in the shadows of the street, strategically keeping away from the street lights. He was leaning on the walls of the shops, pulling his body forward.
His presence presented an unwelcoming sight in the streets where nothing wrong has ever taken place.
The man stumbled inside a dark alley and fell down on the ground. In the dark, his silhouette pulled himself into a sitting position by a dustbin.
Unaware of the stranger in the alley, a girl walked in the illuminated street whistling a tune to herself. The girl with dirty blonde hair, Leora Raven was walking carelessly down the street. She had spent her entire life in this town, all the people knew her and treated her like their own. She had nothing to fear in this place or she thought.
Her heels clicked along the street in a rhythm as she rushed towards her small house at the end of the street. She had spent the entire day confined within the town hospital where she was an apprentice. Now the only thing on her head was to rush to her bed and take a much needed sleep.
The only sound that echoed around in the night was the sound of the heels on the street and the laboured breathing of the stranger in the alley.
Maybe the sound of his breathing was louder than it seemed because just as Leora was passing by the alley, her feet stopped.
Now the only sound that echoed was the sound of his breathing.
Leora stared at the person leaning on the dustbin. He was clutching his stomach with both hands and occasionally released grunts of pain.
There had never been anything to fear on the streets of Ravenhill but seeing the strange man in the dark, scared Leora. Her father had always warned her to stay careful of everything that stayed in dark.
Her palms started sweating as she stared at the man. Her mind contemplated to keep walking, and forget seeing anything but her feet stayed rooted on the place stubbornly.
Another grunt left his mouth. This time it was louder and with more pain.
She realised few seconds too late, only when she was leaning down in front of him, that her feet had carried her to the man.
"Sir...?" She called unsurely in a low voice. She was sure that the man could hear her in the silence that surrounded them. But he didn't say anything. Instead he started coughing voilently, spluttering blood all over the ground in front of him.
Leora stared in horror. The man was going to die if he didn't get help soon.
