The next few days were torture for Marx. He had to go to school on top of visiting his mom and trying to understand what was going on with him. The days counted down to his birthday, but neither he nor his mother got any better.

Finally, it was the night before his birthday.

***

10:00. Marx stared at his alarm clock sitting on the guest room nightstand. He turned onto his side and rubbed his temples wearily. His head felt like it was splitting apart. An hour passed where he tossed and turned, trying to sleep but unable to due to his headache and the burning behind his eyes. He looked at the clock again. 11:00.

He stood up and began pacing. His head throbbed in time with his footsteps and his eyes began to water, his vision going between blurry and crystal clear in dizzying swirls.

The minutes ticked by until Marx couldn't bear it any longer and he opened the window. The breeze coming from it was so inviting and cool that he climbed out and climbed down the tree next to it. He stood in the snow and the dark and felt uneasy. The wind was bitterly cold but he ignored it, walking barefoot through the snow towards his home. The houses were silent and loomed dark and seemingly empty alongside him.

Marx's breath steamed in the air as he looked at his watch. 11:44, it read. He sped up, not knowing exactly what he was doing or why he was going to his house. He stopped before the front door, pulling the housekey from around his neck and slipping inside silently. His bare feet padded quietly on the hardwood floor. He wandered into the kitchen, mind buzzing with pain from his headache and unexplainable excitement.

He froze at the sight of a silver amulet resting on the countertop.

Marx walked towards it slowly, his hand reaching out and grabbing it before he could think. It felt heavy in his palm as he slipped it into his pocket and went back outside. He half-slid, half-ran down the slope behind his house that lead to a large, flat pocket of land that everyone called the Bowl. He walked towards the center, glancing at his watch every few minutes. He didn't know what he was waiting for.

Finally, he stopped at a small mound of dirt in an oblong shape. He took a quick peek at his watch. 11:59. Marx scrambled up the hillside against his will and stood, holding the amulet, at the peak of the mound. The pain in his head became almost unbearable but he couldn't move.

His watched changed from 11:59 to 12:00 and Marx opened the amulet, revealing the crystal. The ground rumbled deep beneath his feet and a hairline crack opened in its surface, glowing an unnatural purple color. The crystal within the amulet responded by glowing as well and sending streams of darkness up into the sky. They turned around at their peak and plummeted, hurtling back down and into Marx through his mouth.

Marx screamed in pain as the fire behind his eyes spread throughout his body, lying just under his skin. It felt like he was being roasted alive from the inside out. His head filled with a roaring noise; like television static but one hundred times louder and more painful to look at.

The ground shook again and the crack widened under his feet. Strange smells and sounds seeped up from the crack and surrounded Marx, beckoning him. He gasped in pain as the crack widened even more, so much so that he was having trouble keeping himself from falling in. With a final roaring crash, the fissure opened to about twelve feet across and Marx fell into the Earth.

***

Beams of soft purple light lifted above the houses and colored the clouds above deep violet. Lights flickered on in houses all around, the rumbling and noise in the ground over except for a single car alarm going off. People stuck their heads fearfully out of their doors and windows and stared at the beautiful and terrible fissure stretching along the entire base of the Bowl.