Chapter One
"I gotta know if I'm livin' in a dream,
is this what it seems
Gotta know anyone believes
How did I get lost, what's the final cost
Could you please help me find the key?"
When Chris woke up early that morning, he knew something was different. Usually the sun would have already been streaming in his window by this time of the morning, but all that he could see out it was an impenetrable blackness. Jumping out of bed, he pulled on clothes and wandered to the door. Peering out, he saw some of the other students on his hall looking out their own doors, and a few people walking towards the lobby.
Chris followed the others to the lobby, and was greeted by the sight of two policemen trying to calm the crowd of students and staff who had woken up to this inexplicable phenomenon. Chris searched the crowd with his eyes, looking for a friendly face, and just barely caught sight of some of his friends exiting the lobby to go to the courtyard. He pushed through the crowd to follow after them.
Exiting the crowded building, he found his friends Jon, Haley, and Sara standing near one of the streetlamps that ringed the courtyard, the only things providing light in a now lightless world.
"Hey guys." Chris approached the group, and Jon made room for him around the lightpost. "Any idea what's going on?"
Jon shook his head, his red curls flattened by sleep. "We don't know anything. The cops inside are simply trying to do damage control. They've got no idea what's going on."
The darker headed Haley spoke up now, her blue eyes sparkling even in the solitary light from the lamppost. "But what could cause something like this?"
The shorter, brown-haired, green-eyed Sara broke in, "This isn't natural, there's no way. And there's no way is some kind of hallucination or dream, because we're all here, and I'm pretty sure we're all awake."
"Are we, Sara?"
Chris and his three friends turned around to see a blonde man wearing a grey robe standing between them and the dorm building.
Sara was the most startled of the four, and backed up until she was standing between Haley and Chris. The blonde man noticed this, and gave a soft chuckle. "Your friends can't protect you, not from me."
Jon stepped up, blocking the man's sight of Sara. "Who are you? Why are you threatening Sara?"
The blonde man simply sighed, and pointed at the ground beneath Jon's feet. "There are more important questions you should be asking, Jonathan, like where do all the lost souls go? Or what happens when I fall through a Door of Darkness?"
Jon and the others looked where the man was pointing, and Haley screamed. Beneath Jon's feet the ground had welled up and turned dark almost as if a black layer of energy was trying to swallow Jon whole.
Jon attempted to step out of the circle of blackness, but dark tendrils of smoky energy wrapped themselves around his legs, pulling him into the ground. Chris and Sara each grabbed one of Jon's hands, while Haley grabbed him around the waist and attempted to pull him back onto solid land.
The blonde headed man walked closer to the group. Chris looked up at his approach, and pulled himself loose from Jon's hand. "Whatever you're doing, make it stop! Let him go!"
The blonde headed man simply smiled. "What has begun cannot be stopped, Keybearer, not even by you."
"What? What did you call me?"
The blonde man simply smiled again, and then threw Chris to the side. As he struggled to get up, a dark hole like the one trying to eat Jon opened up beneath him, only this time, he was dragged down much faster without someone to try and help him. Chris saw Haley receive a similar treatment, as she was roughly pushed aside and another hole opened up under her. By this point, Chris was up to his neck in the darkness, and all he could see was the blonde man approach Sara and put a hand on her shoulder.
"SARA!" Chris used his final breath to scream her name. No one else was nearby , but he hoped that his scream would bring someone to help her. But before he could see if someone was coming, the darkness enveloped him, and he started falling.