October 11th, 1844
Present day

It's 8 o'clock; people had their last seconds of rest before going to work. Behemoth Street now absolutely had no single person in it, except for Merny and Kosie, while the grey corners of the place were filled with leftovers. You can tell that when a lot of people turned around in here, they covered the worst parts of it. Nasty rats ran in the middle of the dirt; a few dogs tracked the poor, gross creatures, and despite all of this, a juicy smell of wine and lemon wafted up from the aristocratic gentleman standing next to Kosie.

"He is on stage five then; interesting." Those were Merny's thoughts as he got closer to the boy.

"I thought I was the last one; besides that coco woman, of course," Merny thinks.

"Don't trust this man, and I thought I was done with troubles today; great!" Kosie thinks as he observed Merny's silver cane.

Silence came as the two men and the kid waited for the other to break the silence.

"Maybe I should say something," Kosie thinks.

"Why did you help me?" Kosie said, but the young gentleman put his hand on the boy's mouth before he could finish.

"Can you hear it?" Merny said, then raised his left hand to his ear.

"What!" Kosie said as he tried to understand the weird phrase. The young man raised his silver cane to the door with the locks and said,

"So you live here?" Kosie turned around to answer Merny, who surpassed him until he reached the door.

"May I sit?" Merny said as he smiled at the little boy in front of him.

"What? Sure," Kosie said.

"Strange! Why so polite now? His arrogant behavior stopped." Those were our friend's thoughts as he watched Merny settle at the house's entrance.

"Come and sit next to me, now," Merny yelled. The little boy didn't understand the man's behavior, but he sat anyway.

"Do you believe in fate?" Merny said, then looked at Kosie.

"Fate!" he thinks as he remembers the man's clock.

"Yes, of course. Now could you tell me what the words on your clock mean?"

"Well, it depends," Merny responds as he leans back against the iron door.

"Depends on wh..." Kosie was about to say before Merny added.

"Are you ready to risk your life for the answer?"

"Risk your life!" If Kosie heard this from another man, he would consider it a sick joke, but...

"He doesn't look like a man who makes jokes," Kosie thinks as he watches Merny.

"Who would know it? The answer is just a few seconds away from me, still." Merny thinks; he tried to hide his excitement, which he did before the kid next to him could notice. The young gentleman sitting beside Kosie is looking for an answer to a question he has sought for six years.

"What's written on this cursed clock?" Merny thinks.

"Listen to me, kid," Merny said, then stood.

"I'll make him tell me what I want, but slowly. I need him to trust me. Poor kid, wish you had a clue," Merny thinks.

Despite the young gentleman's unknown needs, he couldn't let his emotions drag him-emotions Merny had sacrificed a lot for in the past.
. . .

Six years earlier, somewhere underground, a thirteen-year-old child sat at the end of an old staircase.

A small lantern lit the horrible place for little Merny.

"I...I...I killed him," Merny said as he put both hands on the sides of his head. The child shook a bit as he looked down.

"What's this?" little Merny thinks as he gets closer to the stairs' ground.

"It's...it's..."
/screaming/
. . .

"Excuse me, sir."
"What?"

The sound of the little boy woke him up.

"Listen, kid," Merny said as the accent of his speech rose slowly.

"I'll come tomorrow, then you can tell me your decision," Merny added.

"Decision?" Kosie thinks.

"First option: you carry on and live your filthy life like we haven't met today."

"What! Are you?" Kosie said, but the young man didn't seem to hear him and said,

"Second option: you become my assistant, and I'll tell you about my clock."

"Really?" Kosie said.

"Yes, maybe," Merny said, then stood and walked a few steps.

"No, wait. Can you help me too?" Kosie said.
"Help you with what?"

His tongue dried up, and his body shuddered a bit.

"He wouldn't believe me," Kosie thinks. And why would he? All those times when Kosie tried to tell about the strange doors in his house ended up with him in slums. What else would people of ITEFE choose to do: enter a creepy house and trust a child's words or assume that Kosie is crazy? The decision was easy: send the kid to a slum, and the story would end. It did end for them, but not for Kosie; he thought he'll never forgive the royal families for their rules. But a few seconds earlier, Kosie said something he never imagined he would say: "Can you help me! Did I just say that?" Kosie wonders. Who would guess? The answers he spent years to find are in the hands of his torturer, Merny-Sir Merny.

"This is not fair; not fair at all," Kosie thinks...
. . .
September 5th, 1843

Back to the past, in the slums, where Kosie and Horras were following the Honeybird.
"Hurry up, quick!" Kosie said, catching his breath. The bird flew between the rooms and corridors of the slum, fast enough to make the two kids sweaty and tired.

"The hell this bird is fast," Kosie thought while he saw the smart bird waiting for them at a corner. Nearly half an hour passed as the Honeybird flew and took a few minutes for the kids to catch up with it.

"He might be a bird, but he knows exactly that we're no match for his speed-pretty strange," Kosie said, looking at the floor and catching his breath again. Finally, after nearly an hour, the bird stood at the beginning of a tunnel and whistled a few times before getting back to Kosie's side.

"I guess he's telling us that this is it," Kosie said, and for a moment he wondered why Horras was unusually calm. The two kids entered the dark tunnel, and just before they did, the bird tweeted a few times and flew back to its owner, as its mission to accompany the children was done.

"I've never walked past this place before; guess we're on the right track," Kosie said, but no answer came from Horras. After ten minutes of walking in the dark, a light was seen, revealing the end of the tunnel. The sound of small footsteps filled the place as the two children got closer to the exit, and at last, the gory smell of the place was interrupted by a small wave of fresh air.

"Freedom!" Kosie thought to himself.
"At last!"

The two boys were outside the slum, and after a whole year of torture and nightmares, free life was within reach, but...

"This is it, Kosie," Horras suddenly said as he waved his hand.

"What?" Kosie wondered, but the next thing he would witness would stick in his mind for the rest of his life. White vapor escaped from Horras as he was smiling; his eyeballs turned white as he started vanishing slowly.

"You don't need me anymore," Horras said.
"What's happening to you?" Kosie asked, getting closer to his friend, who was slowly turning into white vapor and vanishing.

"Now you need to find Frederick in the city of Cainam; remember..." Horras said as he gave Kosie one last look.
"Father did love us." And in an instant, Horras was nothing but air.

"Horras!"
"Horras!" Kosie cried, slamming the air around him, not believing that his only company for the past year was nothing.

"Horras," Kosie screamed.
. . .

October 11th, 1844

Present day

The sun has risen in the city of "ITEFE"; the weather started to get warmer...

A young gentleman moved his silver cane in the air and said,

"See you tomorrow... kid..."

Kosie calmed himself as he watched Merny's departure... a part of him wished to scream and confess everything-the doors, the mysterious lines written on the wall...

"Just yell and tell him," Kosie told himself, but his body failed him; words abandoned his tongue...

Merny turned around to Kosie and yelled,

"If the answer is no... slums would be heaven compared to what will happen to you..."

The small child sat on the ground after that...

"Great... damn you all," Kosie murmured...

"What a day...? First the slum hunter, then this cold silver man... oh..." Kosie thinks for a moment, but he rushed and stood.

"The factory... I'll be late!" he said as he ran...

"Oh... oh..." Kosie yelled while he held his shoulder... but he kept going anyway...

"But why did he help me? Maybe he knew my father... stupid me; why didn't I ask him..."
. . .

After ten minutes, he entered the machine factory... all the workers were like him-poor and tired before even their shift started... smoke was everywhere...

Kosie held a huge piece of rock on his back, and step after step, he reached a hot oven where the heat was unbearable...

"Hurry up, slowpoke, or you'll have rocks as payment today!" a fat man on a wooden chair yelled as he watched the little boy struggle to put the rock in the oven.

After it, he took a small polluted breath...

"Shut up, you greedy..."

Kosie yelled as he smiled at the old man; he cursed him with more dirty words than he could count each time he reached the hot place, and of course, Kosie added a small innocent smile each time. But the old "Humphrey" couldn't hear him at all; the noise of the machines was so loud...

"Good dog; keep up the good work, and maybe I'll throw you some bread today..." Humphrey said as he had a huge piece of meat in his mouth. All the other employees had their eyes on him as he ate what equaled a year's payment for them...

The factory where Kosie worked had a good reputation...

Just two or three kids died from accidents at least once a month, while adults suffered from deadly diseases and died shortly after a few years. Those were always good conditions for Kosie, compared to Mr. Humphrey's attitude when he got drunk and started to hit kids with his iron bar when he decided that they were lazy and couldn't fulfill the job.

"Nice place to work in..." Kosie talked to himself...

After a long day, all workers formed a line to get their payment from their most beloved boss, Humphrey (not really...).
. . .

It's 7 o'clock; the usual clouds started to cover the city of "ITEFE" while our friend went home; a lot of ideas stuck in his head...

"Another day... huh... I'm done with this job, but what should I do...?" Kosie thinks...

"Job..." Kosie yells, then stood still in his place...

"Second option: you become my assistant, and I'll tell you about my clock..."

"How could I forget...? Damn you, Humphrey... all those hours in the factory made me lose it..." Kosie thinks as he touches his shoulder; the pain gets worse than before...

Kosie was out, wandering between the avenues...

"What should I do...? If I said yes, maybe he'll tell me about those words... beware the reflections...? What does it mean anyway...?" Kosie thinks as the echo of footsteps calms in the small city...

This time he chooses a different road to go home, just to think about all the events he surpassed today...

"Should I say it was a good day...? A clue came up to me... If I hadn't looked at him when he raised his clock, I would never have seen the terms... it's a miracle!" Kosie thinks and smiles for a moment, but then his small happiness vanishes and soon turns into fear...

"Dear... he's a gentleman... I have to do what he said or... great...!" Kosie thought...
And while our boy reached the old house, with a heavy heart, he opened the door to his four-walled room. He rested on the old, torn mattress, checking his injuries. You can tell that after all those hours of work, Kosie's mind was empty as air. The child lay down on the sofa and slept, hoping that tomorrow would reveal some secrets.

A few hours later that night, in the sad room where Kosie was sleeping, a shadow started to emerge from beneath Kosie and slowly spread until this unwanted shadow took the form of a man.

"Curse it," the man said, tightening his jaw. You can tell that Kosie meeting Merny was bad news for this man.

"Out of all of them, he met him; what luck!" the man said, then held his silver hat. He grabbed a knife from his belt and went straight to the wall where the writing was, and then he cut his hand and wrote something on the wall with his blood.

The man stared at the writing for a few seconds before he left the house in a rush.
"Time to act," he said as he was at the entrance of the house outside. Silently, he waited for his usual company as a silver drawn carriage arrived.

The man entered the carriage, and his friend gave him the same salute as the night before, then the carriage left the street.

"We have a meeting tonight; Frederick will possibly be there too," the man on the silver sofa told his friend, who was thinking about Kosie and everything that happened today.

"It's about time; becoming real is one step ahead." The man with the silver hat thought to himself while he took off his silver gloves.

After two hours, the carriage stopped at the entrance of a huge building. A beautiful structure with silver-carved flame statues decorated the entrance-a door made of pure silver, big enough to hide a small farm inside. You can tell that whoever rests in this place is certainly not a common person.

The carriage stopped next to the entrance as the man departed; his friend stayed inside the carriage.

"Aren't you coming?" the silver man told his friend, who replied,
"The meeting is for a specific number of members, not to all of us."

"Private meeting! This means one thing only: sensitive information is about to be told in this meeting, and I'm one of the few that will know about it." The man closed the carriage door behind him as he entered the building.

After a few minutes of walking, the man arrived at what seemed like a mahogany table with thirteen chairs around it. The man took his place at the table, waiting as he was the first one to arrive. At the center of the table, there was a statue of a man holding a flame in his hand, the founder of the Flame Holders, Mr. Frederick L. Rockefeller-a man that anyone would like to meet in person, but only a few achieved such an honor.

The table was decorated with blue candles next to each chair. Time passed as the table started to get more crowded. After twenty minutes, three men sat at the table near the silver man, and each one of them was excited for reasons you'll know later.

"Fools; they never suspected for a second that I'm a reflection. All I had to do to gain my place here is catch as many reflections as I could, and since I'm a reflection myself, finding ones like me is much easier than taking candy from a child." The man thought to himself.

"But when will we meet him?" the man thought as he looked at the statue ahead of him.

"If I meet him, becoming real would be just one step ahead of me, and I would get rid of that child. I'll be able to walk in the daylight like a man-a real man," the man hoped, glaring at the other men in the room.

And as our friend kept his secret to himself, what will happen in this room next will kill all his hopes.

Suddenly, tweeting could be heard in the room. She entered with a smile on her face as the pearls on her red hat reflected the light of the candles.

Her Honeybird was sitting on her shoulder as usual, and although it's been a full year since we have seen her, she hasn't changed a bit. Alethia, the truth extractor and the new leader of the Flame Holders, entered the room with confidence, and in her head was one thought:
"It's time for the interrogation," she smiled.

.............................................................
. .
{...chapter six ends...}