Ruin (The Ruin Saga Book 1) Read Free Page B

young man fell to the ground, screaming and alone.
    *
    Cold. Raw, gnawing agony.
    Alexander Cain was surrounded by darkness. He was suffocating on a vast, viscous something that filled his mouth, throat and lungs. Whether he was spinning and falling, or whether the world was spinning and falling around him, he couldn’t tell. All he knew was that something was moving at breakneck speed, tearing at his body amidst an endless void.
    Here, there was no time. Forever was now, now was forever, and nothing new could ever be. He would remain here until the infinite had grown small, and everything had faded completely.
    And yet, eventually, something emerged from the ether, something that seemed to consume all else: a light. The faintest, most distant light. It was above. There was no direction here, and yet Alex was certain that the light was higher —was up .
    He thrashed and fought his way towards it. The void shrank back and his body pressed against a great barrier, one that stretched and ripped at him with vicious talons. He was being pierced by icy tendrils. The void was pulling him back, desperate to hold onto him.
    For the briefest of moments it was over—he didn’t exist at all—and then he broke into the world beyond.
    *
    The first thing he became aware of was his own screaming voice. The next was the agony, which had followed from the void. The spinning ceased with a jarring jolt, slamming his eighteen-year-old body against unseen ground with bone-crushing force.
    The darkness had been replaced by blinding light. Dense fog surrounded him on all sides, and above was a sky of midmorning baby-blue tones, complete with wispy tracts of stratocumulus.
    From every direction came an ear-splitting ring, pressing in on him with percussive force, a decibel short of perforating his eardrums. His jaw clenched hard enough to pop a filling free from a premolar. The tendons on his neck, arms and legs tensed to breaking point, drawing him into a ball upon freshly cut grass.
    He was shivering—no, quivering. It was cold enough for a layer of frost to have accrued on his body, puckering his skin and clinging to his hair in icy shards. Through double vision and barely opened eyes he could make out his own hands, gnarled and curled into claws akin to those produced by advanced arthritis.
    He was granted a small mercy then, a momentary lull—a split second during which the fabric of existence seemed to undulate, almost to pulse. The sky rippled with ribbons of impossible colours, auroras that dwarfed any that had ever been seen over the Earth’s poles. With those colours came intense sensation: the grass caressed his skin with a passion that surpassed that of the most dedicated lover’s.
    And then pain washed over him with renewed vigour, blanketing all else as the ringing reached an unbearable crescendo, driving him across the floor as though with a booted foot. An unbroken wail stormed from his throat, but he heard no trace of it. If the noise persisted he would go mad. He was certain of it.
    He wished for death, for peace. As he writhed and bellowed upon the grass, the sky lost its ribbons of absurd colours, and the screech intensified a final time. A small part of him registered a sudden, crushing absence in the world, and he realised with horror that the screech was not artificial, not alien or cold-minded, but the product of billions of screams no different from his own.
    This was the last moment, the brink of insanity. He was at an end—
    …
    …
    Silence.
    The world was still, without pain. Warmth kissed his skin.
    Alex blinked.
    High above, the sky was blue—just blue. His hands fell from ears accosted by nothing but the chirps of a distant chaffinch. The frosty glaze upon his skin was gone. He was dry, no longer shivering.
    He took a hesitant breath, heard his strained throat whistle with the gentle inhalation. He kept still for over a minute, too afraid of the nightmare’s return to move an inch.
    When nothing came, he