Prologue.

How can infinity be alive?

The boy was running.

A metal staircase, oval tic-tac marks scoring the floor, the sound of footsteps, shoes on metal. He was running; he was late. For what, he didn't know - and that was the question, wasn't it? Late for what…? Something tickled the back of his brain. A memory - some piece of information; his name.

His legs, shorter than he was used to, tripped down a set of stairs and he fell, knocking the wind out of his lungs, tumbling endlessly down the staircase. And then there was nothing.

[A name.]

[Ananta.]

Ananta woke in a child's bed - a child's body - an unfamiliar room. His body was covered in dust and the flecks of yellow paint, shedding from the walls like a snake. Above him, stick-on stars, having shed the last of their light decades ago, stuck limply to the ceiling. One had fallen, fluttering off his arm pathetically as he struggled to sit up. There was no window in this room.

Strange, he thought, even as the last of his memories slipped away from him. The window is gone.

So was the door, he realized, as he tumbled off the bed, legs atrophied and crumbling. A windowless, exitless box. A desk sat across from the bed - but it was empty, not even the imprint of a book or a sheet of paper to signify that it had ever held anything but dust.

He crawled across the floor, each movement limp, his muscles gone, his body uncooperative. Limbs and fingers and facial expressions twitched and spasmed in odd ways, rebelling against every movement and explosion of dust.

But at the end of it all, each drawer was the same - empty.

Strange, Ananta thought again, opening and closing the drawers of the desk. The whole room was dusty and lifeless; strangely clean. No dead spiders curled in the corners of the room, no hibernating roaches tucked into the back of a drawer. No - the room was strangely clean, aside from the layers of dust. Ananta clutched the edge of the nightstand - empty, lampless - and pulled himself up, leaning weakly against the bedpost. He swiped his hand, dust-covered, on his pants. His clothes, too. Too clean, too well-kept. The dust slid off him as if repelled.

A thud echoed through the room. Ananta turned, strangely expectant. Someone was coming for him. They knew he was awake. Because - because… The memory slipped away again, like a fish down a stream. Gone.

Another thud. This one louder, closer. The sound of breathing. Another thud. Then, like a breath of fresh air - though the room had fresh air, somehow - a ray of light, coming through a crack in the wall.

Metal, Ananta knew, and then the crack widened and the hooded figure of a girl appeared.

"You're awake," was all she said, flatly, as if she already knew. And then the metal wall bent inwards, crumbling, and light flashed into the room, fluorescent, blinding. Ananta closed his eyes, pupils burning from the sudden flood of light.

"We have to go."