The first chapter of Book 1. Whether I post Book 2 & 3 depends on time and reviews. I hope you like. Advice and suggestions for side plots and characters are welcome! Please review!

I do not own CB, and if you're looking for someone who does then you're on the wrong site.

Drums… They filled the great chasm that was the Underworld with a never-ending pulsation of dread and despair… For all that resided within the bosom of Death's Sanctum knew well of their meaning: It was coming. . .

The beat of the drums was eerily similar to that of a heartbeat's; it's pace was doubled with every terror filled instance, and every fear that was horribly realized. Faster, and faster. Darkness began to envelop even the most fiercely blazing of the fire-lined crevices. Matter it did not, for the Servants of the Dark Lord did not need light to see by. The sole purpose of flame was to fuel the forges, and its brilliance was far more of a hindrance than an aid to the sensitive, sightless eyes of Pluto's lackeys.

Endlessly they toiled; propelling the lifts and pulleys that fed strength to a device of monstrous proportions. It was a crane of sorts with massive sockets and crude markings. It's lead was a culmination of blackened chain links miles long, that disappeared into what was easily the deepest of the Underworld's mining holes. Ironically, it was also considered to be the youngest, for it was not originally part of Pluto's domain. After all: what's a few thousand years spent mining in a land where time is kept by the millennia?

"Lift the cage!" roared a slave of Darkness to his underlings. He was far beyond grotesque, with every inch of him a deformity. He was no longer even human, and could not recall having ever been so. Centuries spent in a prison of fire- where wounds did not inflict pain, but neither did they heal- had transformed him, as it had all that paced the rocky platform on which he stood.

Lift a cage they did. And following it was an eruption of fire so intense that it was almost as if in protest of the pit's removal of its bounty. Many cringed at first sight of large stone box. It was made entirely of a stone beheld not but any creature of the living or, as the situation would have it, the dead. It was of the purest white, and engraved with cryptic symbols and powerful spells to keep it forever sealed. The spells did not fail to react to the first blow of a hammer attempting to break its surface. Pale, cloaked shadows rose as if one with the stifling, toxic air that none needed to breathe.

"Stand your ground!" a second shout arose, shattering the tension. All raised their hammers and forks and dove towards the walls of the cage with great desire to break them. The power of the Spirits of great, but it was nearly powerless against the onslaught of millions of souls who had soiled their lives by doing evil, and were now suffering their compensation in the afterlife.

In what may have been a minute, a year, or a thousand years, the great slabs cracked. And within, Earth shuddering roars could be heard. So terrible were they that even those who had met nothing but evil for so long clapped their hands where their ears had once been, in a futile attempt to keep out the sounds.

The Devil's pet had been set free.

Charlie Bone bolted upright in his bed, breathing hard and beads of sweat trailing down his forehead. He heard footsteps rushing down the hall towards his bedroom, and someone bursting through the doorway. A flip of his light switch (It was still pitch black outside) revealed his father's position near the open door, and his concerned expression.

"Charlie, what is it?" he said immediately. "I could hear you shouting from the kitchen."

Charlie shook his head to rid himself of the images, and replied as calmly as he could, "Nothing, just a bad dream. I'm fine." But he was confused by his father's question: He couldn't recall having screamed. He shrugged it off and added, reassuringly, "Really, I'm ok."

But even as he tried to fall asleep again, he couldn't shake the sensation of a fire's heat licking his skin, nor forget the monstrous howls of the creature he had not yet seen, and he didn't want to ever see.

'Jeez…' he mused to himself after his father had gone, 'Thank God Olivia doesn't have my nightmares. I'm not ready to see a dramatic enactment of world's end just because she got bored in class.'

But if Charlie had realized it wasn't his own imagination, then he would have also realized he was the only mortal witness to the first step… the first step in a plan for the end of, not just the World, but the Universe.

I plan to write a lot more, so please review! 