1

It all started as a peaceful night around the Western Hemisphere of the world. Crickets were heard as lightning bugs came out to dance and light up the night as dreams were formed. Puffs of smoke from one house's second-story window betrayed that one person was still awake.

The window was open to let in the cool December breeze that wafted through and drew out the smoke. The room of the smoke belonged to a teenage boy who was awake and was working at a workstation filled with glass bottles of potions. A laptop was open close by with a news article from what looks like 50 years ago where someone discovered a cave deep in the Appalachian Mountain range.

Inside the cave was a ruined entrance to a civilization lost to time, drawings upon drawings painted the walls, and deep holes littered the walls where the explorer found leaves and stripped bark of trees from down at the base of the mountains as bedding. The brave explorer continued deeper into the cave and found more holes and drawings, even finding crude weapons like clubs and swords made from the same stripped bark.

As the article stated, the explorer continued even deeper. They commented that the drawings got more and more detailed as they went farther down; the ground sloping just slightly as they headed deeper. Soon they heard whispers.

It started out as just little noises, but the closer they got the more defined the whispers sounded. Cracked voices from the holes in the walls let out small little phrases.

"He's here, the calamity."

"It's too early the chosen hasn't been born yet."

"The head Architect knows your fate."

"Fire brings pain upon this earth,

Calamitys' sword brings the Chosen forth,

Willpower wields the secret to victory,

The Chosen must dive back into history,

Blood spilt awakens a rage,

A chapter begins and ends the page." The voice that said these lines sounded deeper than the rest, not as raspy.

The explorer described the body that followed the voice as leaderlike. A tall, muscular body that shouldn't be possible with how old the area for the civilization seemed walked closer, footsteps echoing around the cavern.

Dirty long black hair draped the back of the body, tattered clothes were the only reminder of how old the body was. The most noticeable thing about the person was their eyes, despite being maybe a millennia old they were a vibrant sea green color, and looked like they could pierce the explorer's very soul.

"You have traveled far, but you must leave."

"We are not ready to rejoin your realm." A deep husky voice baritoned out of the body and then the explorer collapsed and woke up a week later back in the town at the base of the mountains.

The explorer booked the first train back, immediately told a reporter, and ended up in the newspaper. Soon that's all the world could talk about for months. Others even tried to go searching for the cave dwellers, but they never found the cave.

According to the article, the reporter tried for weeks to get a follow-up story with the explorer, but no such luck. The reason: because the explorer vanished and hadn't been seen to this day.

"Tch, cave dwellers, crude drawings and weapons. Obviously the explorer was on something and made the whole story up just to disappear out of shame." The teen boy muttered to himself as he mixed two liquids together and they swirled to a dark pink color.

He set the potion into a holder on his desk right as a tired knock sounded on his doorframe. He looked up to see his mom standing there almost leaning on the doorframe. Her long grey hair was draped down her back, messy from sleeping.

"Kyle, you have school in the morning and you know how early your father likes to be." She told the teen, who nodded as he pushed his half moon glasses onto his nose.

"Yes I am well aware of the fact that father would like to keep the fact I am his son away from prying eyes." Kyle told his mother as he started turning off Bunsen burners and shut his laptop screen.

A deep sigh came from his mother's lips, "You know it's not like that, he doesn't want you to be treated differently because your his son."

Kyle sighed, but looked up at his mother.  His stormy grey eyes flashing behind his glasses.  "I know mother, but I do not need his help to be treated differently."

"Because of the ways to get into RavenWing academy I am already a target," A deep smirk tugged at the corner of his lips, "but because of the rules they can not harm me because I am ranked first in the academic ratings."

His mother sighed, she knew that he was speaking the truth.  A rule his father put in place as the headmaster was that the top three academic students could not be harmed by students or teachers, and got one request a year from the headmaster.  Provided it wasn't idiotic.

Kyle has been at the top of the rankings for the past three years. Although he has never once used his request. His father let him do this because he never dropped from first place.

There were two other ways to get into RavenWing Academy, one of the four major schools in the world. One was to have a famous parent, or be famous yourself through music, television, or be a prodigy. The other way was to pay the administrative board boatloads of money to get your child inside the doors.

Obviously most of the kids that go in through those methods were just one thing to Kyle. Stuck up, arrogant, stepping stones.  Just little copies of their parents that can't think for themselves.

Kyle was the only one to get in through the third mean. The entrance exams, which are so hard only five percent of students that take them actually get in. Kyles father, Arthur, was the one that oversaw these exams, and it was impossible to cheat in his presence.

No one else, but Kyle, knew why this was. Kyle knew though, because of something he unlocked himself.