Chapter I

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I did not watch everything change because it was gone. Faster than the fastest I could ever imagine.

I dropped. Literally, I dropped on a cold, flat... whatever. My hair was all over my face since I dropped. But nothing in my whole body did hurt.

Except for my head. And feet. And everything. All at once, I realized that my body was in complete shock. Then, there was the heat again. No. It was not the heat; it was totally different. The place was freezing. Plus the floor was just as cold.

I groaned. The plain nothing became so hot, and now, I'm shivering.

I tried moving my feet, and they felt utterly heavy. Probably-oh, this is so strange. I also tried standing up, but I ended up sitting down on the floor. How could I move in this place?

There was a man, an old man. He was breathing, of course. I grinned at the fact that I was not alone after the confusing plain nothing happened. He was breathing, yes, but heavily while staring at me. He didn't seem scary, though. He looked good, in fact. He was just old, but his facial features were beautiful.

As I held myself up, I saw some things. A box with two circles at both sides. It had a shining stick. It also had some circles that looked like, somehow, shirt buttons but bigger. And it was singing a slow song in an angelic voice of a woman. I didn't know what it was.

There was a table near the window. The window was not transparent. It was white. There were more things I found, but just like the singing box, I didn't know what those were.

I looked back at the old man. He was still staring at me for some reason I didn't know. His hand was reaching for me, so I lifted up mine to reach his hand.

He shook his head. What?

He reached for something hanging on his neck. A small chain? He took it out of his shirt, and it revealed a pendant. No. I meant two pendants. Those looked like tiny hourglasses, and they were strangely steady. One was bigger than the other. The thin silver chain seemed to be less plain than its pendants.

He reached for me and pointed to my neck. I ran my hands across my neck, and I felt something. Holding it farther as it felt uncomfortable against my skin, I looked at it, and it looked exactly like the old man's... well, except for the sand inside them. I dropped on my knees to look at his necklace closely. I compared it to mine.

The sand of his hourglasses were going down quickly, and by any chance, the sand would all go down. Well, mine was not like that. It was like I still got a lot of time.

The old man touched my necklace.

"Athene," he whispered and disappeared.

"Athene?" I asked; there was no one listening to me.

That name was too beautiful for a rush thinking. Was that my name? Well, I didn't care. I loved the name, and I would use it.

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