Daniel Ingyang
In the town where they worship Icarus, everyone is taught that the gods were jealous of the angels, and so captured all of them but one who they missed, Icarus.
So, the gods decided to trick Icarus into flying into the Sun so his wings would catch fire and he would fall to his death. Icarus fell for the god’s cruel trap, and would’ve died if not for a great engineer called Daedala, who took care of him and built around him a massive labyrinth and city to protect him from the gods who wanted to kill him.
Every year, young and innocent people from the city are sent into the labyrinth to search for Icarus and become angels themselves if they reached the end of the labyrinth.
The heroine of the story has a best friend called Clara, who dreamed of going into the labyrinth and following the footsteps of her brother Collin, who had been sent into the labyrinth years before. When the day comes, the girl and Clara were both chosen to be sent into the labyrinth, among others.
But almost as soon as they enter, disaster strikes. Winged creatures swoop down from above. Clara and some others began to shout and cheer, believing it was angels there to guide them. But the grotesque creatures start killing and taking away the teenagers, with Clara being taken first. This causes immense grief for the heroine, who goes into a state of shock.
After the attack, the remaining children start to realise that the heaven they were promised was lies, and that they would soon die, taken by some other horrible creature. Our heroine and two others start going back to get out of the labyrinth, but once they reach the walls they find a boy who had already tried and been shot in the chest by one of the guards. He dies right in front of them and they soon believe that there is no way out of this horrible mess.
But fortunately, they are rescued by a group of people who call themselves Fates, made up of all the survivors of the labyrinth. Unluckily, they believe that she is called Clara, because she was muttering it in her sleep. Clara’s brother Collin, who is the leader of Fates, believes that the girl is his sister because of the passing resemblance and lets her off doing chores and spends lots of time with her.
Soon she is in so deep that she doesn’t think it possible to be able to explain that she isn’t really his sister. But then Collin goes on a raid on a monster nest where he finds Clara’s rotting head. He comes back, identifies her as an impostor and turns very nasty towards her.
He soon sends her out to collect water, but by a route that will probably kill her. He even discards other’s lives just to kill her, out of vengeance because she lied about being his sister. All seems lost when the girl has an unlikely rescue – by someone the Fates always thought of as an enemy…
