How was it possible that something so wondrous existed within a world full of such cruelty?

Max opened up his wallet and pulled out a piece of worn parchment paper.

He looked over the words. The penmanship. The flourish of each letter.

This note—which he had mysteriously received a year ago—was the only thing in his life that gave him hope.

He read the words once more.

Max,

Don’t forget your promise. Find me in the tower.

Elle

2

Max had already gotten back on his wheelchair and was wiping the blood off his face, when Sarah rushed into the hallway.

The girl had black hair that she kept in a long braided ponytail and large rimless glasses.

“Max!” she cried. “What happened? I was waiting at our meeting spot?”

Sarah and Max lived together at the same group home for orphans and so walked home together every day after school.

The girl was fourteen, two years younger than Max. She would have been his sister’s age if she was still around.

Max appreciated Sarah’s kindness towards him, but he knew that her association with him was causing her trouble within the social circles of her year. For someone kind like Sarah to suffer because of him was the last thing he wanted. So he devised the meeting spot: a corner a few blocks from the school where they’d meet after school, away from the prying eyes of the rest of the student body.

“I got held up,” said Max.

Sarah’s eyes watered. “Seth again?”

“It’s no big deal,” he said.

He lifted his arms to roll himself forward. A sharp pain ached across his whole body. Max grimaced from the hurting bruises all over his body.

“Here let me get that,” said Sarah, going around him and taking the handles behind Max’s wheelchair to push him forward. “And before you protest, all the other students have gone home now. So you can’t worry about me.”

She beamed a smile down towards him and Max craned his neck back with a groan.

“Fine,” said Max. “You win today, but that doesn’t mean we’re going to make this a regular thing.”

“You realize your wheelchair has these handles for a reason, right?”

“A design flaw, if you ask me,” Max joked as they left the school.

It was a sunny day, so they took the long way home along the canal.

The city of Zestiris lay before them: the tall skyscrapers, the giant wall that separated the outer-rim and the tower-zone, and, of course, the always looming mysterious tower at the center of it all.