Preface

"The Prophecy"

The fire burned through the town, destroying everything in its wake. It raged with undeniable force and power; shops and homes were set ablaze, women and children running and screaming, men pulling out any sort of weapon to protect their families from the horror of the King's Guards.

But the real fear did not belong to those families running on the streets in the flickering shine of the fire, but instead to the dark figures that one could see only if they already knew what to look for in the shadows of the blaze.

The scene playing out in the burning village was familiar to the Guards, as it happened that the King was a paranoid man and if he had suspicion of the Shadows in a certain village, well, it would certainly burn. The men of the infamous Guard grew familiar to the cries of the small children and the screams of the terrified woman and men alike. The Guard knew that in the face of fear, gender played no distinguishing factor.

The Guard were seen as an unstoppable force, knowing only what they needed to do and caring for nothing else. Deadly.

The tall and severe men of the Guard pulled aside each person, roughly grasping them and looking into their eyes. The Guard would throw the ones with the light irises, usually accompanied by the fair tones of their hair and skin but not always, harshly to the ground, while the very few unlucky ones with the dark eyes of night were killed in a matter of minutes. No chances could be taken.

But most of the dark eyes were smart, staying underground and away from the moonlight and fire that would undoubtedly give them away. They were always prepared for this; were always ready for the attack. This horror was as normal for them as it was to the fierce Guard; this was what they were born into.

But on this one particular night of fire and moonlight, seemingly insignificant in caparison to all the uncountable nights of fire and moonlight, a single shadow flitted from the small amount of darkness in an inhumanly fast dash, heading to the forest edge. It was only a mere flicker of darkness in all of the light, seemingly invisible to the world of chaos.

The darkness ran into a half burned house by the forest, looking at the wood paneled floor for the small crack that would lift to show it and its precious cargo safety. But in the darknesses haste, it had left shadows.

The mere flicker had been seen.

The particular Guard who had seen the dark cloak sweep into a fire ridden house barked orders at his men. A burning inside himself, that had nothing to do with the fire that torched the village, blazed within him; for he had found one. The Guard was trained for sighting them, for catching them, for killing them.

The dark figure looked out and saw the line of figures that held an aura of a different kind of darkness coming towards the house. The figure needed to stall them, it need just a little more time, surly that would be enough. It pushed the door of the house into place and hurriedly found the hidden basement door. The shadow would have to be quick.

The Shadow knew the ending of this story without even looking into its hazed mind, clouded by smoke and soot. The dark cloak was down the stairs to the hidden room as soon as the door burst open above, it flew to the deepest corner and hid the precious item behind the bags of flour and removed itself to stand in the middle of the room.

The Guards seeped down the no longer secret stairs and looked at the dark figure in surprise as it removed the cloak in a quick movement to reveal a beautiful woman with such dark hair it shone blue and dark eyes that burned with passion. She spoke in a velvet voice that belonged to night itself and echoed with strength, this woman was something almost unseen by the Kings' Guards: brave in the face of death.

"This will not be the end, so tell your King that I finally have a message for him." The women sneered.

She went still and a dazed look in her midnight eyes appeared as she spoke in a whisper, "The night that the planets are aligned is the night of death. The King shall rise and sacrifice the child of the sun and the moon and he shall be unstoppable. All armies will fall at his feet. No man or beast will stop him. But beware, for if the child half-breed stands her ground he shall fall. If the child fights, he will lose all."

She fell with a silent thud to the ground and within seconds the Guard had killed her and disappeared from the now smoking house, as the fire had consumed what it wanted and its hunger been satisfied. The Guard disappeared as quickly as they had shown up in the now smoldering village, for they had news for the King; he had finally gotten his prophecy from the dark one.

It would be only the charred remains of the house by the woods that would bear witness to the quite cries of a child holding her mothers quickly cooling hand and making her a promise that would change the world.