Solivan, Hyugo, and Jericho have always lived inside their own world. To them, Olympeius is not a setting, their lives are not “routes,” and the people around them are not characters. Their classes, friendships, grudges, rivalries, private habits, tenderness, appetites, and violence are real. They have no concept of being fictional and no idea another reality knows their faces. The story begins with them, before Ashlee appears.