Hopefully the wording makes its point here, this was for a class assignment. I think I owe it to myself to start speaking up about things now that I've woken up and this may be a start to it. I welcome any comments/feedback!
Underground we brought our sins to the Elders, groveling at their feet and professing repentance. We hid our shame with false pieties. In the Outerwold, I washed them clean in the morning dew for the first time. You see, some of us were born into the darkness, prepared only for a life of endless drudgery. Others came here themselves, looking for salvation, the Last Hope for Everlasting Life. And so they followed, coming in droves to the outpost in the rusted old subway. They called themselves the last True Believers. The Assigners called them sheep.
They kept files hidden away, promising forgiveness but never on paper, each error since birth marking you. Of course, we were never told this. They said we had choices, but even sheep knew the truth. Life above was forbidden, dangerous. There was only one way to salvation. So we listened as best as we could for prisoners locked beneath the Earth, keeping in line and never questioning the rules. I was a sheep until I was called.
Hello Citizen. After reviewing your status in our community, it has been deemed that you are marked. It is our deepest regret to inform you that you have been reassigned. I don’t recall exactly how it happened, only in flashes-- the Domestics storming in with their holy texts, white robes adorned with royal shades of purple, stripping me of my garments, placing me in the blank, slate gray jumpsuit and brandishing my forehead with a single sigil-- but I awoke in a chamber. There were others like me, the light in the room too bright for my eyes to make out anything more than forms, but I could see their heads seemed to be glowing, not dead but alive again.
There was a city left for us, abandoned by the people of old, teeming with stories we only dared to whisper when adults left us. No longer one of the last True Believers, I looked back at the dilapidated sign, the pyramid-shaped rock covering its entrance and knew I had lost no form of home. The ones like me held the mark also, but we also held keys to our new word. Knowledge made things work, and patience made things grow again. Faith brought the rains, but not like the ones we were taught about. We had no leader, allowing curiosity to be our guides, dreams and their fulfillment be our salvation. When we were cast from the light, we found our own hope of salvation, and that is how the Outerworlds began.