"Don't look into the darkness," their mother says, a steady mantra throughout their youths, a warning engrained into their heads long before they even know.
They are 12 years old when she tells them. It is their shared birthday, but instead of a party in the yard, Charles and Raven get the truth. It's not much of a gift.
Their father thinks it's too soon, but he will always think that and Sharon knows this. She tells them, not because she thinks that they are ready, but because they need to know. Because of the danger that not knowing holds. They are getting too old to be under the constant protection of their parents for much longer.
"Don't be afraid, darling," their mother tells Raven, who is clutching Charles' hand anxiously, "If you listen and learn, they will never touch you."
They learn much that night, about their ancestry, about life and death, about the here and the beyond, about the space in between, about mirrors, iron, salt, and age-old incantations. They'll never need them, their mother assures, because they will never follow the path of those that came before them.
It sounds like a fairy-tale to them, although a horrific one, unreal, intangible.
They have never met these ancestors, these generations before them that have given their lives, their blood, to fight an evil that most people don't even believe exists.
Charles and Raven possess what they did, what their mother possesses: the power to see, and the power to act. The power to find evil and banish it back into the abyss.
But history is not destiny.
"Never look," their mother tells them sternly, "If you don't see them, they won't see you."
It's the best choice she can make for them, all the warning she can give, but they are children and they don't understand the implication, the true horror that lies behind her weary eyes.
It's years before they truly catch a glimpse beyond, and by then it is already much too late.