Prologue

A small island town whose residents have been either murdered or enslaved by a local gang.

Fast forward years later, and the town is now the armed fortress of a drug lord and his evil henchmen.

All that's missing is the hero meant to save the day.

I'm sure these things sound familiar to you.

The minor details may change, but the story beats the same.

You've seen this happen in movies. Read this in books. Maybe even heard it in podcasts.

It sounds oh-so-comfortably familiar, and so you can't help but think.

Surely...

Surely a hero will come.

One day.

But I never believed that.

Pure B.S., that's what I think of it.

Because that story is the life I've been living, and there is no hero in sight.

I knew that since I was seven years old, and my father thought it was time I learned the truth.

So yeah.

There's no such thing as heroes.

Or so I continued to believe.

Until He came to save me from the pages of a book.

I was eighteen years old then.

Cynical and nearly suicidal.

If not for the stray cats that I was feeding around the island, I think I'd have long killed myself.

But they kept me alive.

Because I knew they needed me.

They kept me going and made me take things one day at a time.

But with every passing day, the struggle to get out of bed just got harder, and a heaviness I could only feel but not see just kept growing until I could barely breathe under its weight.

I wanted to die.

To the point that I started losing my mind.

And started contemplating that maybe...

Just maybe it would be better to kill the cats and take them with me to the grave.

I'd make it quick and painless.

They'd fall asleep and stay asleep.

I'd be doing them a favor since they'll finally be safe and free from pain and starvation.

Yes, yes, yes.

A voice inside my head would eagerly express its approval whenever I thought of such things.

And it was a voice that even a heathen like me had known was not human.

That voice had terrified me.

And I knew that I had to do something to shut it up.

Anything!

And so my desperate search for protection began.

I didn't have access to a phone or the Internet. I didn't have anyone to ask. But what I did have was an entire island to explore. Abandoned homes to poke around in. And other people's belongings to rummage.

I searched and searched without fail because it was all I could do.

I didn't stop searching because I knew.

The voice inside my head was still there.

And I didn't want to hear it again.

Ever .

I would've killed myself if I thought it would allow me to escape hearing it.

But even then, I somehow knew that taking my own life would only cause me to hear it for all eternity. And I think that's when the idea first came to me.

If the voice could torment me for eternity, did I have anything to lose if I considered the possibility that the other side of the coin also existed?

The answer was clear.

And so I just did it.

For the first time in my life, I tried that thing that many of the people whom my father killed did with their dying breath.

Are you real, God?

Because I already feel crazy talking to someone I don't see or hear.

So if you're real...

'Show yourself' is what I had planned to ask.

But God being God, He had already known what I wanted to ask.

And so He had answered my prayer by sending me the biggest and scariest-looking rat I've ever seen in my entire life.

Is this a joke, God?

It had stared at me before scurrying away, and all I had been able to do was stare.

You want me to know you're real through a rat?

I had found myself following its trail even as I started wondering if I had truly gone crazy.

You've really lost it, Eden. You really have fucking lost it.

But just when I was about to give everything up---my quest, my sanity, and even my life--- that's when I saw it.

The rat falling down, down, down...

And I discovered a trap door that my father and his men had somehow missed.

Because hidden underneath is a treasure trove of medicine, canned food, and a book.

Yes, that book.

Because I did say it from the start.

That's how He saved me.

And gave me a new reason to wait.

And hope.

And trust.

Luke 11:13 "If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!"