Disclaimer: I do not own any of these characters or names of the places and monsters. They are owned by Clamp and Gravity respectively.

Chapter 1 - The Omen

Eriol had been sent home early from school from a raging fever. He hadn't wanted to come home so early since the whole school was preparing for the winter festival. It was probably one of the most looked forward to events of the year. Each class was in charge of one event, be it a haunted house, a play, an exhibition or a shop of sorts. His class have opted for opening a cafe and they were just getting ready with the preparations. Their cafe was designed by a fellow student to look very classy and elegant and the class was divided into three teams, the cleaning staff, the waiting staff and the cooking staff. Eriol was a part of the waiting staff. He had personally wanted to be in the cooking staff but the president and the vice-president of the class banned him from it and had put him in the waiting staff against his wishes.

"You will be part of the waiting staff, Eriol, it will boost our sales." said the business-like class president, pushing his glasses back to where they belong. "We need to win the prize money in order to promote a better vacationing spot next activity week." piqued the vice president seriously. Eriol peered down at her. Their vice-president was probably the smallest person in the whole school and yet she has a way of making people listen to her and bowing down to her commands.

Eriol was good looking but he was neither the hottest nor the coolest guy in school. There was something more than his looks that attracted the girls though so wherever he went in school, he was always accompanied by a small group of fans following behind him. This something, unfortunately, had made one of the most popular girls in school infatuated with him. She was a girl he did not care for so he turned her down. Surprisingly, this little incident had skyrocketed his reputation to Eriol's annoyance. He was the type of guy who would rather be by himself than with other people. He liked to watch and observe things happening around him but he never wants to be a part of it.

The sky was dark and murky, lashing out at Eriol with chilling winds and stone cold rain as if they were angry with him for going home early. Reaching home, he slowly opened the iron gate, feeling dizzy and nauseous. His eyes were heavy. Staggering forward to the front door, he outstretched his hand to grab the doorknob and missed due to the fact that he was seeing double. The fever must be getting worse. He looked for his keys, glad that for once that he couldn't be followed home. After a lot of fumbling and mistakes, he finally found them in his pocket and attempted to open the door. He held on to the doorknob to guide his hand with the key but he missed and dropped them. Bending over to pick them up, he felt a rush of dizziness and blacked out. Upon waking up, he found himself wet, hungry and cold lying on his own doorstep. He picked up his keys and tried again. This time he opened the lock with less difficulty and opened the door.

The house he had entered was simply but cozily furnished. The walls were painted with a light yellow paint that shone even brighter when sunlight hits. Without the sunlight, the room looked dull and dead, leading him to eternal darkness. The floor was covered with wooden floorboards that were darkened with shadows. He trudged on the purple welcome mat before remembering to take off his shoes. He wobbled through the hallway until he reached the landing of the stairs while dragging his backpack along, dripping wet. Looking up the stairs and groaned. He didn't ever remember the stairs ever being this long.

Slowly, drenched and weak, he made his way up to the second floor. He had let go of his backpack along the way without knowing it. His mind was now only focused on one thing, getting to his room. The yellow painted walls seemed eerily menacing and seeing double didn't help him much at all. At long last he reached his room.

Eriol's room was a fair sized attic room, with one of the walls slanting down meeting the normal straight wall half way in between. Although his room was also covered in hard wood floors, he had two rugs on the floor, the big oval one sat under his TV and beanbag chairs and ends just before his bed. The other one is a smaller one and it sat between the desk and his bed. His desk was in the far right hand corner, his dresser was right beside that, and both of them had the same shade of brown. The television was right in front of him sitting on a small metal stand with two shelves, the VCR was sitting in the shelf underneath it and his Playstation 2 was sitting beneath his VCR. He plopped down on his beanbag chairs in front of his TV, unable to walk any further. He cursed himself and got up again, determined to change into dry clothes before he slept.

How he got into them, he didn't really know but he wasted no more time and scrambled into bed with his hair still wet. He could care less now but it will probably dry when he wakes up. Burrowing under his covers, he could feel himself burn hotter still, if that was humanly possible. Panting heavily now, he sees a blurry puff of smoke rising lazily into the air from his mouth. If he had more strength, he would have tried to catch it in his hand. He was pretty sure that he was delirious, but that puff of his breath had looked like, like-

Eriol had fallen into a deep, deep sleep.

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AN: This is my first story. I hope it's not too bad.