Ander opened his eyes, his body felt like it was floating on clouds and didn’t feel pain anymore; for a moment he thought that he had died but then his eyes focused on his mother standing over him with her hands outstretched and a light green light coming from them and flowing into him. Few witches could heal, it was a skill that most found useless but he was glad in this moment that his mother knew how to do it because she has put him back in the battle because of it.

“What happened?” Ander asked with a dry voice, he tried to sit up so he could study his surroundings but he couldn’t see past the six other woman who he recognized as his mother’s bodyguards, the six strongest of the witches who followed his mother, who followed the High Witch Hadia. “They attacked you to flush me out… it worked” she started, “We had to move you to the Gathering Chamber where we could defend ourselves more easily, they have us beat for now but we haven’t lost yet” she continued.

Ander listened to his mother; he couldn’t believe that they had lost, that the strongest family of witches since the Ancients could fall just because of a rebellion from the lower classes. “We haven’t lost yet my dear child, we have a chance to beat down our enemies and cast them aside but to do this you must go and retrieve your brother” Hadia said and saw her boys head whip in her direction at the mention of his brother, the brother he had never seen before but only heard stories of.

“My brother, but I thought he was banished from our world for his own protection?” the young man asked his mother, the woman looking at him, her eyes filled with the sorrow of the loss she felt thinking about her lost son, “He was, but he is ready now to come back to us, to help us bring true peace to this world” the woman said, her voice laced with sadness as she thinks about having to rely on her fifteen year old son to bring peace to her world, or so Ander thought as he watched and listened to his mother.

“I have just enough power to send you to the other world. Once there you will have to find your brother and find the Inventor, he will know of a way for you to return to this world” The woman said as she walked over to the large table that stood inside of the Gathering Room, she picked up a book that lay on it and flipped through its pages until she found what she had been looking for.

Ander knew better than to object so he followed her like the good son he was, his mother’s bodyguards forming a circle around him, their hands outstretched towards the sky that could be seen from the large window above them, His mother started chanting, reading the words from the page of the book in her hand. As Hadia’s voice rose and the chant started to sound like it came from all around him the words from the page came alive and sprung from the pages and to the floor where they formed a circle around him, his mother made eye contact and in that brief look Ander saw how sorry the woman was that it had come to this.

The world around Ander started to go out of focus but before this world was lost to him Ander heard the doors to the Gathering Room being blown open though when he turned to see what had happened he felt himself falling, before the panic of falling could set in though he felt hard ground beneath him as he fell to one knee, a cool breeze playing through his ebony hair and against his skin.

Drew tried to shake his friend out of it, Eric just stood there though, his friends voice not reaching him as he saw the young man standing in the park he had seen before, standing in the park next to the high school in town. “Eric… Eric… Eric…” Drew tried over and over again to bring his friend out of it, and finally Eric blinked his eyes and saw his best friend’s worried face and felt his strong grip on his shoulders and all the boy could do before everything went black was say, “He’s here”.

Hayden had come into the room just as Eric had passed out; Drew looking up at her but with a wave of her hand the blonde boy passed out as well and floated peacefully back to his own bed before being covered with the sheets. Hayden had heard what Eric had said and it worried her that the person he had been dreaming about all this time had come to this world, because now just wiping the dreams from his memory wouldn’t work, now she would have to take a more direct approach.

Over and over again the same dream played itself as Eric slept, the boy didn’t know what to make of it, the young man standing in the park and looking around, everything foreign to him as he studies everything from the street lamps to the cars that would drive by every so often. Somehow Eric knew that he was looking for him; how he didn’t know but as the young man that felt familiar wondered to the edge of the park Eric knew only one thing... he had to meet him if he was truly in the park not that far from where he lay in his bed. Slowly Eric came to, the world around him coming back in turn; sound came first, the sounds of his worried friends and Hayden’s gentle voice trying to calm them; next came touch, the touch he knew belonged to Maddie was on his forehead and when finally he got his sight back and looked up at the familiar faces he was bombarded by questions when they noticed.

Hayden had made it so that Drew did not remember waking Eric or that the boy passed out, instead she gave him the memory of her coming in to sooth away the nightmare that Eric had had. Maddie had come in shortly after Drew had awoken due to Hayden talking to Eric as he slept, the girl rushing over to check on Eric herself, and that is when Eric had woken up.

Eric sat on his bed thinking, Hayden had told him to rest and told Drew and Maddie to let him rest but he didn’t want to be here, he wanted to go to that park and find out what’s going on. He felt restless as he just sat there and waited for time to tick by, he felt the familiarity as he listened to the clock on the wall and looked at it every few minutes; deciding that he couldn’t take it anymore he got up, he had to find out what all of this meant and he knew where he would find those answers.

It only made matters worse that this was the first time that he could remember his dream fully, that there were no gapes or loss but instead just complete clarity. Every dream that had come before this one, that he had somehow never been able to recall came back to him and with them the knowledge that they may not just be dreams.

It was dark out, the clock on the wall saying the same, 01:24am. Eric quietly got out of bed and retrieved his shoes from under it; he had gotten dressed for his plan when he went to bed after everyone had left him to get some rest. Making sure that Drew didn’t hear him he opened the window slowly and as softly as he could before he climbed out of it and closed it behind himself again, he didn’t want to worry anyone else with this which is why he didn’t tell anyone anything about what Drew had heard him say. He had found it strange that not even Drew remembered what he had said, but he didn’t want to dwell on that right now, no, right now he wanted to give all of his attention to figuring out what his dreams really were.

Making sure to softly transverse the distance from the house to the road Eric made his way into the shadows he knew like the back of his hand, this wasn’t the first time he had sneaked out like this without anybody noticing. Making sure that he wasn’t being followed by his light sleeper of a best friend Eric ran down the narrow road that led to town, the feeling that he was being watched crept up his spine and stayed with him from the second he left the house, the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end with each step he took closer to the park.

The night was eerily quiet, nothing made a sound but still the feeling of being watched stayed with him, and in the woods where the orphanage stood he knew more than just deer and owls lived. When the lights of the small town came into view Eric picked up the pace, something deep inside of him drove him to run faster, partly to reach the park and partly to out run whatever was following him. He couldn’t hear anything following him; he had only this gut feeling that something dreadful was following close behind.

The town stood before him, its lights illuminating the area around it, only a few people awake at this time of night. It had taken Eric forty-five minutes to reach the town at a steady pace thanks to him forgetting to bring a flashlight and the road to the orphanage not being lit; he was winded because of the long track here and even with all the running he did it had still been something he wasn’t used to. Slowly making his way to the park next to the high school he caught his breath while his thoughts ran wild all over the place, the high school in sight only served to send his train of thought into the darker side of things, he didn’t know this person and he might not even be his brother, he might not be anything to this person. But the lights that illuminated the park next to the high school served as a sort of hope to him as he walked closer still.

Standing on the sidewalk of the park Eric couldn’t see anything; there was nobody there, not even the homeless guy that slept there. The eerie feeling still with him as he stood, he could hear something but he didn’t want to hear this sound, he heard something breathing behind him. His instincts told him to run but he couldn’t, so instead of being scared like he normally would be, he turned around; the sight alone had made him wish that he had never been born, a black wolf twice the size of any wolf he had ever seen stood before him, its blood red eyes focused on him, studying him and suddenly Eric remembered the words Hayden had spoken so long ago, “You more than anyone should never go out at night, and never alone if you did” the boy couldn’t understand it.

The wolf slowly moved forward, paw after paw the huge beast came closer and with each step closer Eric’s heart beat faster. The beast stood before the boy, its breath against his face gave away that it had killed something not long ago, Eric couldn’t think as the beasts eyes bore into his own, it felt like the wolf was devouring his very soul. He wanted to throw up as a feeling of sickness came over him, he tried his best to hold it back though as he stood completely still in front of the beast which could kill him before he could even call out for help.

“Vilandia!” a voice shouted, a voice that made the beast react and let go of whatever hold it had had on him, in one jump the beast had put the same amount of distance between them that they had started with. Something flew past him, he felt the force with which it cut through the air but he couldn’t see anything, though clearly the wolf did as it seemed to do battle with something.

Eric watched the great beast dodge what he guessed were attacks and he would see the signs when the wolf couldn’t in the form of cuts that oozed blood. The boy couldn’t take his eyes off of the sight in front of him, and still he didn’t understand what it was that he was watching; it was brutal and yet it felt familiar to him, it felt like he had seen something like this before but like so many things in his life he didn’t understand why that was.

When finally the great beast couldn’t fend off its attacker any longer its front legs were lost to it closely followed by its head, and then instead of the dead body Eric expected to see he saw the once great beast burst into black smoke as it disappeared. The same rush of wind went past him again and as if on command he turned around to follow it and saw the person who had shouted that name before, the person he had seen arrive here before.

Eric didn’t see anything but somehow he knew, that there was something behind this person walking towards him, somehow he just knew that what had killed the wolf was still there, watching, guarding and waiting for its masters next command. The young man now close enough for Eric to see more clearly, he could see the resemblance, they looked alike with the same colour hair and almost the same eyes if it were not for this young man’s glowing bright blue and his own deep green, but this person also looked more serious than he did and this person seemed to carry himself like someone with power would; just looking at him Eric knew, this person was strong and commanded respect.

Before he could open his mouth to speak a howl could be heard piercing through the night, it was deafening and strong. The man reacted, his eyes darting left and right and when Eric did the same he saw many more wolves like the one before walking closer, their eyes all trained on this person who had killed one of their own and their eyes only carried the hate they held for him.

The young man turned his eyes back to him and his expression changed to worry, he opened his mouth to say something but Eric didn’t hear anything as the world went black. Hayden stood behind Eric as he fell, one of the wolves appearing in front of him to catch him, “You will not have him” the young woman said to Ander who just stood and watched as this woman, this witch summoned something that was classified as a Grand Witches spell and in that moment he knew, he couldn’t win against her even if he gave it everything he had.