PROLOGUE
Darkness swirls at the edges of consciousness and fills the corners of the room with a sense of foreboding. Vlad Masters, his normally fine clothes filthy and torn, kneels with a hand outstretched, fear etched on his face. The object of his attention lies on the other side of his laboratory: Daniel Fenton cowering against a wall with a horrible freakish specter floating over him.
"No! Stop!" shouts Vlad franticly. The flame-haired teenage-bodied ghost turns to face him with a sneer and temporarily forgets his previous target, flying toward the prone Vlad. As he floats across the room he seems to age before Vlad's eyes, finally stopping right in front of him with the appearance of a well-built young adult. The white flames dancing on his head match the madness dancing in his red eyes, and worst of all, in the center of his chest lies the ghostly D and P symbol, the emblem supposed to belong to Danny Phantom.
He laughs mercilessly down at Vlad. "What's the matter, old man? Did you loose your precious little GIFT?"
The monster's words shock Vlad back into action, and he concentrates for a moment, trying to call up the power within himself. Nothing happens. The ghost laughs at the surprise evident on Vlad's face, then backhands him against the wall, flying in close before he had a chance to recover from the hit.
"All those years you HATED Jack for what he did to you," he growled in Vlad's face, then drew back with a cool self-satisfied smile, "but now you'd give ANYTHING to have it all back, wouldn't you?" The ghost began laughing, and the mad cackle grew in volume till it drowned out all other sounds or thoughts. An explosion rocked the castle, washing over Vlad and Danny, sweeping the whole castle, blowing huge chunks of masonry far away into the clear sky...
Vlad Masters bolts straight up out of his bed, dripping in sweat and panting as if he had just run a marathon. He scans his dark bedroom with wide staring eyes, searching for anything amiss. "Just a dream," he says to himself between gasps, "just a horrible nightmare."