[b]I am the Darkness. I am the corruption and the corruptor. And I will eat this world.[/b]

Atlas shot up from his bed, breathing heavily. The nightmares had plagued him for about 5 nights now. Always the same thing. It started with total blackness, and he felt around, finding rocky walls and outcroppings that made him think he was deep inside a cave. Then flashes of bright green with an eerie glow. Was it a glow or a flash? It made no sense to be both but he could never remember it clearly. Just black and green. But the words he had heard:

[b]I am the Darkness. I am the corruption and the corruptor. And I will eat this world.[/b]

Those words were new. It was common for Atlas to have dreams, but normally they were his fantasies, his fantasies of hurting people, of asserting dominance, but these dreams, these nightmares, were different. They made him feel powerless, vulnerable, and afraid. He sat for a couple of minutes in bed. It was 6:30 am, so he would have to be up in half an hour anyway. It felt pointless trying to get back to sleep for another half an hour, so he dragged himself into the shower.

He stripped himself down, and stepped into the shower, letting the warm water cover his body and relax him. He cleaned himself in the usual fashion and stepped out the shower, pulling on a large bathrobe and rubbing a towel over his blonde hair, before placing the towel back over the side of the radiator and stepping back into his the main room of his bedroom. He grabbed a hairdryer and dried his hair thoroughly, before dressing himself in the usual Coates uniform.

Most people at Coates had to share a room, but in the case of exceptionally dangerous students, they had their own rooms to themselves. Atlas was one of them. Another one was James. James and Atlas were two of the top dogs at Coates, the kids not to be messed with, though for different reasons. James was someone who people feared and respected. Atlas was just feared. 

He headed down towards the cafeteria to get some breakfast before the day began. It dragged along as usual, Atlas paying little attention, stuck in his own world, sick of all the people around him. And then suddenly from nowhere, just as the second period ended and other students grabbed their belongings, when the teacher and a few of the students suddenly disappeared. Atlas was… perplexed. He stayed in silence as some of the kids seemed dumbstruck, one girl even began screaming, before a boy with brown hair told her to ‘shut the fuck up’. As the kids piled out into the corridor, he could tell from the conversations around him that the same thing had happened to the rest of the teachers. Then, he spotted James barking out orders, sending everyone to the cafeteria. He wandered over to him, standing a couple of meters away.

[color=ed1c24][b]“ You know, people would say there’s probably some kind of reasonable explanation for this. But there’s no reasonable explanation for all the teachers and half of the senior year to just vanish into thin air. And seeing as it seems that all of the teachers are gone, who’s to say this is only as widespread as Coates? What if this is the whole town? The whole country? The whole world? And if they don’t come back, there’s going to be chaos. You can try and control everyone, be in charge but it won’t work.”[/b][/color] Atlas said, his hands in his pockets, and a smirk on his face. 
[color=ed1c24][b]“ Come on now, let’s all listen to James and head down to the cafeteria!”[/b][/color] He said, only slightly sarcastically as he walked past James, sauntering down the hall towards the cafeteria, a smirk on his face as all the other kids were in panic.