Page 2 of Sage Haven
I didn’t care.
I had to keep going.
I had to believe something waited for me beyond this dark.
Because this wasn’t how my story would end.
Not here. Not like this.
Just as I reached the stretch of pavement that should have been the light at the end of my tunnel, reality closed in.
I felt it first like a sickness, seeping deeper with every step.
The night shifted into an undeniable turning point that screamed they had already won.
Already gotten what they wanted and disappeared, leaving behind something far worse that would follow no matter how far I ran.
A mark no one could see but one I would feel in every breath, every waking moment, and every broken piece of memory.
That’s what followed.
I wasn’t running from them.
I was running frommyself.
They had remade me into someone unrecognizable. And no matter how many lies I whispered just to stay on my feet…
I knew the truth.
There was no going back.
I wasn’t just broken. I wasclaimed.
And now… I was theirs.
1
SAGE
Istood at theedge of the world, or at least that’s how it felt. The horizon stretched endlessly before me, a bleak canvas of muted gray and pale gold, where the sky kissed the earth. I stared out over it, my gaze searching, desperate for something—anything—that might anchor me, might offer a sign, a symbol or a fragment of hope pointing me toward a future less suffocating than the past I’d just fled.
But there was nothing.
No answers.
No revelations.
Only emptiness.
An infinite expanse that mirrored the hollow ache twisting deep in my chest, as vast and silent as the thoughts that churned in my mind.
Thoughts too heavy to speak aloud and too sharp to release without bleeding myself dry.
The adrenaline that had carried me this far, that electric pulse that had driven my escape, was ebbing now. It drained from me slowly, leaving in its place a cold, suffocating stillness. And within that stillness, one question took root, pressing hard against my ribs until I could scarcely breathe—Whatnow?
My father had always said that life was a choice between two things—boredom or tragedy. He would sit at our kitchen table, cigarette smoke curling in spirals above his head, and mutter it like a curse he couldn’t escape.
“Boredom or tragedy,” he’d say. “That’s all it is... Pick your poison.”
