[got that epilogue & questions and answers and concerns then I'm finished woohoo also I'm going to sleep & I won't be on as much for a bit I'm goin on a trip & happy early thanksgiving !!]

I woke up in the rings. It was still pitch black outside, but the sun was barely beginning to rise, and to my left I could see all three of my remaining friends. Some part of me was glad they weren't dead and that I wasn't too, but the other kept taunting that we were running out of time quickly.

"Hey," Ryan whispered from beside me, staring straight ahead, "you were right. You were right all along. I-I should've listened to you. I'm sorry."

In the soft light, I could've sworn there was blood on the side of his face, but I couldn't tell. He was only a few feet away, but I had to squint to even begin to make out the outline of his body. "Sorry? Sorry about what? What happened?"

He turned to his left and leaned forward for a better look at something I couldn't see. He didn't look back at me. "Everything. I'm sorry for everything. I'm apologizing for all the stupid things I did to you and all the shitty things I did to other people. I'm sorry for never admitting it."

Ryan never struck me as the type to start spiking confessions in the face of potential death, but losing our lives seemed like a stretch in the situation. "You're not gonna die; nobody's gonna die. We'll get out of here, and John will come pick all of us up, and we can go home—"

"It's too late for that, Breadbox! Neither of us are going to make it out of here alive! John's too late." The mere thought sent him into hysterics, and it took a moment to register the blood splattered on the side of his face wasn't his own. And my heart skipped a beat.

I was right. I was right the entire time. I wished I wasn't, but every hunch I'd followed during my time in Blue was true. "Pete's over there, right? What happened to Tyler?"

He shook his head and bit his lip. He didn't look at me. "Pete was the first one. I woke up second, and I watched it rip into his chest a-and—"

"Who? Who ripped into his chest and what? What happened?"

It all happened so fast. He'd barely opened his mouth before something swooped down behind him, and shoved his hand clean through Ryan's chest. I couldn't stand to watch after that; I turned the other way and held my breath.

"You are aware of the fact that he was lying, don't you Brendon?"

I knew who that was. I didn't want to believe it, but it was a voice all too familiar. "He wasn't. H-he's a good person. None of them deserved—"

"Of course they did. I know it. You know it, even if you don't think you do," Dallon knelt down beside me, hot breath brushing against my shoulder, "deep down, you and I both know that everyone here deserved it."

They didn't. All of them were decent people; nobody deserved the fate that had been shoved down their throats. It was sick and twisted.

I watched Dallon, taken over by the thing he'd bottled up for years, wander a few feet away, almost to the point where I couldn't squint to see what he was up to. He hummed quietly and scooped away at a pile of dirt, and uncovered a two-sided scale — the one I'd seen at the bottom of one of the pages to his journal.

"People are so... easy... to corrupt," his eyes flashed in the dark like a searchlight, "except for three, apparently. I've known of three people in thousands of years that have earned a way to their next life. Every other one has been tainted by the worst of sins. Especially at the peak of their empire — everything went downhill."

"Who were they? The three people, I mean."

He waved his free hand, the other holding the heart squeezed lightly. Blood dripped to the dirt. "You'd probably believe me if I said it was the one with the hat, and one of them was. Patrick, I believe, which makes sense. I didn't expect anything else from him. Then your friend Spencer, which is also expected. The other one was Pete, surprisingly. I really didn't think he had it in him." 

I didn't either. Pete didn't seem like the type of person to be filled to the brim with good deeds and purity. It was the time, but I took a moment to think about what he hadn't done, and what everyone else had. They were the only good ones he'd met, whatever that meant.

He dropped Ryan's heart on one side of the scale, and it shot down to the ground in an instant. He clicked his tongue and pulled a feather out from beside a clay jar carved into a dog, and carefully placed it in the free bowl.

Nothing happened. Neither side budged, and in that moment, my own heart stopped.

He sighed and shook his head slowly. He sounded disappointed, but it was obvious to tell that he was far from distraught about the results. "I hoped, I hoped. I do admit, I liked Ryan a little bit. Some things just can't be forgiven, I guess."

"W-what'd he do?" I thought I'd known Ryan; he was good. I never even considered the fact he'd done anything sinful in his life.

"It's a fairly small thing in comparison to most others I've seen," he pushed on the bowl with the feather a couple times with no avail, "but small things can create large and horrible results.

"He didn't mean to run the red light. He was distracted by a text message from his friend. The cars with the right of way had to slam on their breaks, some didn't. A couple vehicles swerved at full speed into the bridge, the usual. He glanced down at his phone once to see a notification, and he killed nine people that night. Purely accidental, and if he had admitted to running the light and had taken the blame, he would be in another life right now. But he did plead innocent and walked away unscathed, even though he knew he'd done wrong and caused the death of nine. So many families suffered from one mistake.

"But you see, he isn't moving on simply because he killed nine. He's stuck here for lying about it, fibbing under oath, shattering families. That is the worst sin he committed."

"What about the others? T-the nine people that died?"

"They're in their next life. Three were children, too young to have done any wrong. Mothers, fathers, that had dedicated their lives to helping others and raising good wherever they went. The remaining were innocent as well, and even if I were awake to judge them, they all would have moved on anyways. I am the judge, and all who have been wrongly stripped of life will see their next, unless it is severely undeserved."

If Ryan really ended up being that bad, and his heart had nearly drilled a hole in the earth, I could only wonder what else he'd seen, what other things people had done. Surely Ryan's wasn't the worst, considering he hadn't meant to in the first place. What had my friends done, what had everyone else done, what was the worse that I had done?

I was next. I wasn't planning on judgment day being so soon — I hadn't set foot in a church for years, and I was the furthest from pure and innocent throughout college, even if I did try to dedicate myself to work as often as I could. Rotten things simply managed to quietly slip their way in. I couldn't even begin to recall the most awful thing I'd taken part in.

I held my breath when he tucked the organ away in a box, mumbling under his breath about saving it for later. He paused the rambling when his face was inches from mine. I recognized every feature but the solid white eyes that seemed to glow.

For a few minutes, Dallon sat there. He didn't move. He didn't blink. His fingers twitched, as did the bags under his eyes, and every so often his head would jerk to the side for a split second. I was so terrified, I couldn't move, even if I'd tried to. All I could do was pray my own heart didn't outweigh the feather.

"I wish you could hear him going at it in here," he whispered and tapped his temple twice, "he likes you, Brendon, he likes you a lot. I've never heard so much profanity from him before. So loud, so full of hatred."

In all honesty, I felt like I was about to be sick. My mind raced to the thought of the real Dallon trying to take his own body back over, but then I thought of Ryan's lifeless one right beside me, and a pang of nausea hit me like a tidal wave. "Why? Why are you here — why are you doing this to us, out of everyone?"

"The human race is corrupt. It has failed to change for the better for thousands and thousands of years, and it never will. Humanity sealed me away because they were afraid of judgement day and my methods that were supposed to bring peace and fuel the absence of sin. I gave them all the chance to live, and they took it for granted. Abused it. Destroyed it."

The silence was interrupted with a quiet whine, and a quick grab on to my shoulder. He was shaking, sniffling. I had to remind myself there were two people present, and that I hoped the one I'd grown particularly fond of was far stronger than the other one.

"You have to run," he whispered, like the other part of him was right behind him, "nobody else is going to die tonight. Go get John, call the FBI, whatever, but you have to run."

I couldn't. I could get to my feet and take off for the museum as fast as I could. I had the opportunity to keep all my vital organs and move on with my life, and save many others in the process. Whatever was just speaking to me was dangerous, and as all the pieces fell together slowly, I assumed an Egyptian god was not a force to be reckoned.

"I can't."

Faint blue had begun to surface against the white, and his grip held tighter. "What do you mean you can't?! Go! You have to go before it's too late! I don't want to lose you too. I can't lose you too."

"I can't just leave you here! I can't lose you — I'll find a way to help, we can figure something out!" The anger rising on his face fell back, his hold on my arm barely touching my skin. "We can fix this. I know we can."

I only blinked, and the slightest hint of light blue in his eyes was gone, and what I could've sworn were claws dug into my upper arm. There really wasn't a way out. Maybe I should've taken the advice and the opportunity and run the other way.

"Tell you what," he drawled with a wolffish smile, "I am beginning to like you too, Brendon. Your bravery is remarkable. I'll offer you two choices."

I swallowed my fear and held my head high. I couldn't back down, not now. If I did, my heart would be in the box and I'd be done for. Any chance of making it out with a shred of myself would be considered a feat good enough for me.

"If you're brave enough, it's your turn for judgement. You have the chance to move on to the next life and start with a clean slate, a new path to turn out better than this one. That is, if the feather weighs more."

That one was too risky. I knew for a fact my heart would weigh more than the feather in any twisted universe where it could possibly be lighter than that. Egyptian mythology was a strange concept. "What's the other one?"

His lips curled into a wicked smile. He could tell that I knew I would never pass the first option. I was boxed into the second one if I wanted a way out.

"The second option is that you stay. You stay, you live, you can be with your, dare I say it, lover, for as long as you want."

It sounded too good to be true. There was always a catch to something so sweet. "What else? What's the condition for that one?"

"My brother," he said lowly, "my brother can not reach his full potential sealed in a jar. He needs a body like the one I have found while he rises to health again. You are the perfect host — just on the brink of fatal corruption."

I could practically hear Dallon's voice in my head, urging me to take the other fate in place of the one he had been locked into. Scenes from the last week and few days placed through my mind. All the times he'd creeped me out, kept me up all night long with nightmares flashing on my eyelids, ripping out the internal organs of the people I'd grown to know and care for. He'd never get his life back, and if I went down the same path, I wouldn't either. I couldn't help but wonder if I was brought to Blue for what it wanted.

I knew what I had to do.