"No one can see it, some can feel it, and only the few can use it. We belong to the few."

Marith Merryfield felt anything but merry that morning. She found herself waiting for a delayed train on a deserted platform, in the freezing cold of the Dutch autumn. Just when the strangeness is making her consider turning around and going back home an empty train rolls into the station.

For reasons unclear to this day she decides to get onboard.

An unlikely, and quite impossible, train accident is about to hurtle her into a world she had always suspected existed. It was a dark and absurd place she had rejected and suppressed when she was young. Now she would need that dormant part of herself to survive.

After a brief hospitalization she must choose between two continents and finds herself reluctantly boarding a plane to Oregon to be reunited with her shadows. She returns to the town she grew up in, which is where her father still lives and her childhood memories linger.

By the end of the week the mysterious train accident turns out to be the least of her problems. Her life was never supposed to become this serious this fast.

Through an improbable and unfortunate series of events she is soon introduced to a motley crew of characters that appear to be carrying the same struggles through life. They possess a familiar sense of inadequacy and insecurity. Marith realizes that for the first time in her life she has found herself a tribe, or, as they prefer to call it, a Chain.

She is introduced to a world of Prophets, Runners and Mages led by an Oracle and a Watchmaker.

Over the course of several weeks Marith learns that, together with her Chain, she is expected to save this fabric of reality, by fighting a mysterious and immortal creature and his aggressive pet. In order to have a chance at overcoming this force of nature she has to revisit the darkest and most desolate corners of her mind.

*****

The total word count of the first 12 chapters amounts to about 85.000 words. The total word count of the first 30 chapters will amount to about 225.000 words.

My chapters range, roughly, from 5.000 to 10.000 words.

I post with irregular intervals, on random days and at different times.

I hope you will enjoy the story! English is not my first language and I am very much open to constructive criticism.

Disclaimer: I regularly use impressionistic or abstract language on purpuse, when I think it might benefit the story.