No Rest for the Seekers(Intro)

  Serena Babylon looked up at the sky and smiled. It was such a beautiful day today. The sun was shining the birds were singing. Life itself was bliss. She couldn't think of how to make the day better. Her family was behind her, all smiling and laughing and having a wonderful time. A butterfly landed gently on her hand, bright yellow, and she smiled at it.

  Suddenly ashes blew off the butterfly and the yellow color disappeared. The butterfly became an ominous black color with red detail. Then, like the butterfly, ashes flew from everything dusting up the air. The beautiful green grass she had been standing on was now black, dried up ground. Her bright blue sky became gray and filled with crows glaring down at her from the dead trees. She looked behind her and her family was cornered in their own home cowering from a hideous monster covered in shadows. It looked back at her for one small minute that felt like an eternity and she saw its eyes were glowing blood red. The monster ignored her and embraced her family in that shadowy mass that surrounded him. She heard them scream and cry. Mother, Father, Aunt Emily, even the little ones. She screamed at the monster to stop, to release her family, to bring them back but it just looked at her and disappeared into nothingness.

  "No!" she screamed and ran to the patio. A small amount of shadow remained and she tried to grab for it but it dissipated in front of her eyes and slithered off in tendrils. She looked at her hands, shaking and fearful. She looked around and around the now desolate area. "Mother!" she screamed. "Father! Someone!" she was shaking all over now. She was all on her own. Only eleven years old. She fell to her knees and began to cry, curled up in a ball. She could still hear the crows above her but nothing else. No sound of humans.

  She heard a soft growl behind her and turned to look. There was that monster, all curled up in a black robe made of shadows. She saw her mothers face screaming from the robe, and her fathers, her Aunt Emily's, her baby sisters, her four year old cousin's. She looked up at the monster numbly. His eyes were no longer red, but glowing silver. He held out a hand for her and she saw he was nothing but bones under that robe. She wasn't afraid though. She was too numb to be afraid. She reached her little hand up and took the monsters, and suddenly, his eyes were red again, and the crows that were hiding in the trees surrounded him and engulfed her in darkness.