I've recently started a little thing. I hope I can get some feedback. I've already got another novel on my mind, but this one has really captured me, and I'm not nervous about the fact that I'd like to start it. It's an excerpt from what could possibly be a finished project. Enjoy. 

--------------------

Death was cold. A plebian, unimaginative word, and yet the only descriptor that didn't seem inadequate, or overly elegant, to what Jax was experiencing. Cold. Unlike any she had ever felt. Ice crept through the soles of her boots and cradled her shins as she walked, every single step reminding her forcibly of Sage's bright blue eyes in the midst of white. Every droplet of water, dew from the early morning, clung to the trees—just his shade. 

Behind her, wood creaked as the trees bent in the wind. Jax, for a moment, let the amusement in her chest expand, warming her from the inside. She hadn't thought that death would be anything more than a black slate, and yet here she was, traipsing blindy through her own little frozen fantasy, icicles like diamonds, like the sharpened edge of the sword at her hip. 

The prophecies and oracles called death your final and flawless resting place, and Jax couldn't disagree. 

Jax passed a small cottage, looking just as if it had been carved into the hill it was pitted in, and stopped. The stillness around her had begun to buzz, the cottage calling to her. The wood, soft and kind-looking, lured her close, and as Jax stepped onto the porch, her eyes fell shut. The world converged on her all at once, icy-cold, stinging. It burnt her fingertips a brusing black, drew the moisture from her lips. 

Jax, her eyes still shut, twisted the doorknob and stepped through. Her eyes came open as the door shut, flickering rapidly at the sight. It was cozy, far from the minimalistic dwellings of her youth—almost terrifying in its intensity of lived-in comfort. Chairs, large and plush, covered the mahogany expansion, curving in a circle around the fireplace. Torchlight kept the place aglow, and bookshelves covered the walls from top to bottom. Tomes were settled on side tables, as mismatched in their width and style as the furniture. Colossal staircases spun along the expansion of the walls, enormous windows framing the skyline, where Jax could see what felt like the edge of the Earth, dipping into more bright-white snow. 

The clearing of a throat threw her back into the 'present', and she whipped around. Bright blond hair, bright eyes—her best friend, come to haunt her. 

"Sage?" she whispered. "What the hell are you doing here?"

He smiled, and it pierced through the warmth, straight into the folds of her carefully guarded heart. It always did, that smile. And yet... something was off. He was looking at her, and the next moment, examining himself, smirking a very un-Sage-like smile. 

"Sage?"

He looked back into her eyes. "He's very good-looking. I do not blame you for the way that you feel." 

Jax's entire being tensed. "What?" she said, a rush of terror almost crippling her. Please, please, anything but this. 

"Ah, my lady, I thought you liked it. Have you changed your mind?"

"Ye-no," she whispered, her voice harsh and grating against the silence of the cottage, the stillness of the world outside. "I do, I just—there-there is—" she cast 'round for something to say, reaching for a barrier between herself and what was sure to be the end. "There is no wind. It feels unnatural." 

Not-Sage blinked, and the world outside the window began to swirl with snow, picked up by a new wind. Jax swallowed her fascination back, smothering it with her disgust, her terror. 

Not-Sage raised his eyebrows. 

Jax glowered. 

Not-Sage sighed, and the wind died down enough that he could begin, as it seemed, to speak. 

"I apologize." He didn't look apologetic. On the contrary, he looked delighted. "But you were called here, were you not, by the dwindling of your Time?"

Time, the subject of the clock on every Guardian wall, housed the countdown of your lifetime that only you could see. Jax's was, she knew, not to run out until she was ninety-three. 

"You've made a mistake," she said, ringing her hands. "I am to stay alive for another seventy-seven years."  I am to stay alive until Sage cannot. Please, please. 

Those eyebrows, surprisingly dark against the bright blond of Sage's hair, rose. "Really?" Bright eyes narrowed. "We do not make mistakes." 

He was right, wasn't he? Ocassus', bringers of death and protectors of Time, didn't make mistakes. 

But Jax's Clock said ninety-three, and she definitely hadn't been. 

The Ocassus pursed his lips, watching her carefully. "I'll make you a deal." 

Jax panicked. "No." You weren't to make deals with the Ocassus, the downfall of God in the first era. But, you weren't to anger or upset them either, and Jax could feel that she hadn't really succeeded in avoiding that. 

Not-Sage seemed to be in a forgiving mood. "I will rectify both of our mistakes..." he nodded at her, face impassive. "My apparent misconception of your Time and your refusal of my terms—I might also add, that they were not even stated yet"—his eyes glowed black, and Jax backed up a step—"If you promise me one thing." 

Sage Sage Sage Sage Sage—

"Anything." She had changed her mind. She wasn't going to live with this monster, this... horrific replica of the man she loved. "Anything at all." 

"Do not try to come back." He smiled, and this time, it was not with amusement, but awash with cruelty, with the promise of death. " But I will warn you, my dear. You will want to." 

"What? No—!"

Darkness reached out with its large hands and pulled her under. The last thing she saw before she fell unconscious was the shifting of Sage's body into something much more terrifying—much more inhumanely beautiful.