Prologue:

The girl screamed out in horror. They were everywhere! The Enemy blocked all possible exits and they just kept coming. They surrounded her family, keeping them around the perimeter of the room so the center was visible to all; restraining them with knives angled at their necks. She looked around cautiously and saw, with a glimmer of satisfaction, that there were at least two men needed to keep each member of her family from lashing out in a black fury.

She focused her attention now on the two men holding her against the wall. The one on the right was a heavy-set man with short-cropped hair and a long ugly scar that gashed from his right temple all the way down to the bottom of his left cheek. This made his features look misshapen and blurred his aristocratic features. The other man, who looked to be about twenty, was fairer and had a good amount of thick blond hair that almost covered his eyes completely. He had very prominent cheekbones and actually looked slightly uncomfortable standing next to her, almost as if he disapproved of the Enemy's plan to rid the earth of Casters like herself.

She began to struggle against them but it was no use. The first man—the one who held the knife—only grunted and held the knife closer to her thin throat. This stopped her efforts quite suddenly and a bead of blood welled up at the edge of the blade and then made its way down the collar of the brand new shirt that her mother had bought her just that morning. It stained the white blouse and she felt a wave of cold fury crash over her like a tidal wave.

A small whimper past through her lips involuntarily and the burly man looked smug with satisfaction. Well she would show him! She slowly turned her head in his direction. His mouth twitched up in a smirk thinking that she could do nothing to harm him. He was dead wrong. She took a deep breath and hacked a large glob of spit right into his eye. His grip on her loosened as if he made to wipe the spit away. That was all she needed. She mentally knocked the blade out of his hand; her eyes turning pitch black as she did so.

The men looked taken aback at the drastic change in her eye color. While their guard was down she grabbed the second man's arm and twisted it violently until she heard a clearly audible pop! The man's shoulder was just popped out of its socket. His other hand went up to hold the now useless arm and she took the opportunity to land a roundhouse kick to his chest. He fell back and crashed into the wall, his head jerking back and rendering him unconscious.

Now the man with the knife was just staring at her is shock. He had not realized that she was capable of this amount of damage. She smiled wickedly and lunged at him, landing squarely on his chest and forcing him to the floor. She took his leg in her hands and, propping her knee up, smashed it over her leg. He cried out in pain as his leg snapped like a twig in her small, nimble hands. The girl then took the knife from where it lay beside her and lodged it in his throat. He choked as the blood started to spill out of his nose and mouth, his eyes looking at her pleadingly. But there was nothing she could do, even if she wanted to, for his eyes were already growing dim as his life slipped away. He took one more gurgling breath, his body spasming and then went completely limp.

She had killed him, with her own hands. She knelt there in shock for a moment but was snapped back to reality by a cry that almost sounded inhuman. She whirled around just as one of the older men took a dagger from his belt and plunged it right into her mother's chest. She stood there, paralyzed as her mother gasped in shock and pain, staring at the knife that protrude from her chest right above her heart. There was a moment when every one froze in horror as the blood seeped through her shirt like a crimson rose. Then she fell. Her mother dropped to the earth like a dead weight in the center of the room.

Then everything seemed to happen at once. She ran to her mother, as the lifeblood gushed out of the mother's chest, staining the hard wood and making it very slick. She was almost there when a shadow loomed over her, blocking her path. She paid no attention to who or what it was as she called up her Casting powers. She felt the shock of adrenalin and power coursing through her veins—her very soul even—and felt the familiar spark of fire at her fingertips. She looked down, seeing her hands glow with black fire amazed at how it didn't burn her. She willed the fire to form an orb and it did so easily. She thrust out her hands and the flaming sphere met its target in the chest. The man, who smelled of the Enemy, screamed and as he tried to extinguish the fire, turned to ashes at her feet.

It was too late. She reached her mother just as she took her last shuttering breath. The girl fell to her knees and her body was convulsed with uncontrollable shaking. She started to cry. The girl no longer cared about what happened to the rest of her family, her brothers and sisters, her aunts and uncles, not even her father. All she knew was that her mother was dead and that her world had just shattered into one million pieces that could never be placed back together ever again.