Because I Love You✔️

Prologue

"BECAUSE I LOVE YOU"

BOOK ONE
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Prologue: Remembering

It began, and ended, with the loudest bang his ears had ever heard.

It hurt... the heat on his head, the flash of agony, the deafening thunder... it really, really hurt, but just as quickly as it came, everything faded into a feeling of coldness, followed by an odd dark emptiness that permeated every part of his being and overwrote his consciousness. 

It was then that he knew it was over.

He drifted away from the street where his body was lying, down through darkness, slowly becoming more comfortable. Everything had gone black.

There was no color.

There was no light.

There was no sound.

There was nothing but an endless void that stretched on and on, and yet, he wasn't afraid because the shadowy tendrils of death fit him like a glove, and a warm one at that, cradling him in unseen arms and whispering loving things in voices that he couldn't understand. 

He didn't struggle when the feathery fingers slid over his eyelids and lips, and he may have even smiled a little, because for once, there was no more pain, no more suppressing his tears, no more need for the numbing ice to keep the shattered pieces of his heart intact.

It was really over... he had done it.

On his seventeenth birthday, he, Xaphile Heseroph, had ended the mistake his parents had made seventeen years ago.

His own life.

The realization that everything was over comforted him, soothing the agony that had been festering within his soul for years. Strange flashes of confusion and delirium washed over him, making him forget everything, even his own pain, rapidly, memories old and new vanished from his consciousness, leaving behind only the deepest of exhaustion.

It pulled everything away from him, and he was about to give into the darkness of death when a voice suddenly filled the space around him. He no longer had ears, formless as he was, but his entire being resounded with it.

"You are me... " it whispered. "Not me as I am... but me as you are..."

It sounded like his own voice, which was strange.

What? he silently questioned. Who are you?

"Ah... I can feel your anguish... like poison, painful... what have you done?"

Even in death, he felt a little confused.

I killed myself, he silently explained. I'm dead. It's better this way.

"No, it is not. You are beginning to forget everything. You've truly stopped breathing."

Breathing?

"Breath."

What is breath?

"It is life."

The voice echoed, but he was getting too tired to pay attention. The shadows deepened around him, soothing the ache that he couldn't even remember.

"I will not let you do this... not here, not now. Your heart... it is brave. I feel it. Brave and pure."

Brave? Xaphile asked, finding the word strangely unfamiliar. What... does that... mean?

"Bravery is something you have," the voice explained. "Something that lies deep inside your heart."