Callan Oshiro and the Family Secret

by AWakeingDream

My parents died when I was little, and I've been living in Rutledge Home for Girls ever since. I thought I would be stuck there until I turned eighteen and would be kicked out. But then, a familiar looking woman with purple hair steps straight from my parents past and my mother's manga and right into my life, sweeping me up into a dream world of magic.

1. Prolog

They're coming for me.

I run as fast as I can, my sock covered feet almost sliding across the smooth marble surface of the floor in his part of the castle. My eyes burn with tears, my heart pounds with fear, my lungs burn from oxygen deprivation and my legs feel like jelly from running so much. I don't think I've ever, in my entire life, run this much.

But I can't stop. They're right behind me, and if I stop, they'll catch me, and that'll be the end of everything.

The air around me feels ice cold. I can see my breath. I can feel the dread coming off the creatures chasing after me – the sorrow, the despair. It hurts. It's all so powerful, so potent, that I can feel it in the air like thick smoke. I can feel it crushing down on me, slowing me down. It makes me want to stop, to give up and just let them take me. But my body's refusing to listen to my mind, and it keeps running on it's own.

I duck behind a statue and open up the secret passage, disappearing inside it. The door slams shut behind me, so I finally take the time to pause, turning around to face the door as I slowly back away from it. I can still see my breath, but not as much as I could before. The door seems to be blocking out everything those creatures make me feel. But somehow I just know it won't last long. They'll find me, even in here. So I turn around and run down the corridor as fast as I can make my legs carry me.

I burst through the door on the other end, letting it slam shut behind me as I stumble and fall to my hands and knees on the floor, my wand skittering out of my grip and across the corridor.

"What's that?" someone down the corridor whispers. I burst forward, snatching my wand up, and pressing myself against the wall behind a tapestry on the other side, curling my hand over the tip of my wand to smother the light.

"What?" another voice asks.

"I just saw something," the first voice says.

"There's nothing there. Come on."

I wait until the two people's footsteps fade away before lowering my hand from my wand and let out the breath I was holding. My heart almost stops when I notice that I can see my breath quite clearly. The tapestry hiding me is ripped to the side.