Prologue

Prologue

A new day breaks after a cold winter’s night. Aunty M is restless in her sleep down the hall as a shadow loomed over her. She screams in terror. “No! You cannot have him!” as the shadow reminds her of a promise. Cold sweat drips down her face as she wakes up to the rooster crowing. She rushes down the hall to EJ’s room and finds him still sleeping. He wakes up and greets her, asking if she needs anything. As she tries to smile and kiss EJ’s cheek, she utters a firm “No!” She then walks back down to her room, feeling startled and shaken. She has stumbled upon some revelations hidden inside her late husband Mike’s journals, suggesting that the Five Keys of Destiny and their immense power, Good and Evil, are about to be unleashed. Aunt Margret’s situation is becoming more difficult because her dear nephew EJ is about to become a powerful force to be reckoned with. He might be the key to finding someone known as the White Solon, or he could even be the person himself, as prophesied by the oracles over the last thousand years.

Morgan, an evil wizard, and his master, Hess Lotti, known as the Shadow King, have summoned an army of dark soldiers from different realms and worlds together. They aim to take control of everything, and Morgan claims to be the new God, set to remake the fabric of Time and bring darkness forever. The people pray that EJ, a boy, is strong enough to help them and save them all from doom. Aunty M, reading and seeing all this, is shaken and stifles a cry, hoping for God’s help.

On the first day of winter, Aunty M and the Downing family were greeted with a beautiful white blanket of snow outside their window. However, they knew this was a deceptive sign of what would come. While snow may bring joy to some; it can be cold and heartless for others. Life is a mix of good and bad, but sometimes it feels like the bad days outnumber the good.

The Downing four older children had just returned from an adventure to another world, which was full of danger and excitement. Although each experience was a great learning opportunity, everything now seems different. The family is aware that hidden dangers often go with beauty, and their lives have been forever changed. Evil is about to spread its wings, take flight and leave destruction in its wake. The question is whether the Downing family will be strong enough to face the upcoming storm after the calm spell. Aunty M and the family pray that they are prepared for the chaos that is about to occur. Derrick, the Council of Light, and the High Elders have instructed Aunty M and the older Downing children to remain silent like the rest of the family. They understand that speaking up could put themselves and everyone they know in all the realms and beyond in great danger that could lead to extinction event not only for them but everyone in all the realms far and beyond.

Robert and his siblings Julie, Anna, and Will have returned from their two-week trip, but due to the different realms they had visited, they had been away for much longer, possibly months or even years. During their time away, they discovered their unique abilities and the gift of “Sight.” They also realized that Robert’s visions were coming true, revealing their dark secrets and each other’s abilities. The siblings had undergone tests to prove their worthiness of holding their new skills, but they were strictly prohibited from discussing the details of their tests. Breaching this rule could have disastrous consequences for them and everyone they knew in the future.

Robert has been experiencing more frequent visions lately. He saw people from distant lands who seemed to belong to the world of fairy tales. However, Robert knew that his eyes had been opened, and what he saw was not just a product of his imagination; not anymore. For like him, his brother Will and two sisters Julie and Anna. All their eyes have been awakened in the Truth and the Light. He knew there was magic in the world, both Good and Evil. The people he saw in his visions were calling for help because a dark plague had spread across their worlds, leaving nothing but starvation and death in its wake. According to his vision, this was about to happen, and it saddened him greatly to know that he couldn’t help them, at least not yet.

Robert is a fifteen-year-old boy with the unique ability of “Sight.” He can see various outcomes of alternate realities and their consequences. It’s important to note that he doesn’t have any other magical powers at the moment. It’s uncertain when he and his family will acquire additional magical abilities. Although he never intended to become a soldier, he might have to take up that role if his visions come true and if he and his siblings continue to pursue their current path. Robert has visions that he and his brothers, Will and EJ, may soon be able to manipulate time, but they have yet to figure out when this will happen. Recently, Robert has had many visions that show him leading powerful Armies of Light, but this reality has yet to come to pass. 

Although these visions seem almost impossible, Robert is grateful for them as they bring him some comfort, that, it is not today but, in the future, if things stay on course.

Today, he is marking the days of December and circling EJ’s first Christmas with them. He and his brother, Will, have been planning to make it a memory he will cherish, knowing that EJ will need strength for what will come in the following months and years.

Robert understands that he cannot change the inevitable despite his desire to do so. If he interferes, it could make things even worse for his brother EJ and everyone else, possibly leading to destruction and an extinction event. Robert prays for the Gods to strengthen them and give them the power to confront the impending darkness. As he looks up, he notices a shadow of Aunty M, who has been behaving oddly lately. She, like Robert, has been experiencing strange and terrifying dreams about the increasing darkness and evil in their own world and others. throughout the many galaxies. They are leaving death and destruction in their wake.

Robert and Aunty M can do nothing to stop it from happening, feeling helpless as mere mortals. For now, at least. As he watches his Pa start a fire in the fireplace to take off the winter’s chill, he decides to focus on the things he has control over. Meanwhile, his Ma is in the kitchen baking Christmas cookies to take over to the Whitmore’s farm as they begin to look for a tree this year. Something normal but important as he gives a heavy sigh of things he can change and can’t change, for now at least.

“Pa?” Robert asked, coming down the stairs of their newly built home. What memories do they have from the time it was built? 

“Yes, Robert.”

“Could we have the Whitmore’s over for Christmas Eve this year?”

Robert asked, watching the snow falling outside the window.

Pa answered, placing another log on the fire. “They should be back

from their trip to see their grandparents. I do not see why not; what do

you say, Martha?” Pa said, watching his wife Martha take out a batch of

Christmas cookies.

“Humm, what was that dear?” She replied.

“Renee and the boys spending Christmas with us this year?” Pa asks again.

Absolutely, they would love that,” Martha declared with a hint of exhaustion as she contemplated the amount of baking that still needed to be done. Nevertheless, she enjoyed cooking in her new kitchen. With the aid of her two daughters, Julie, and Anna, she could effortlessly bake and cook for her large family and added guests. Furthermore, Aunty M had moved in to help share the burden since her husband Mike’s passing last summer. The truth was that she adored having her as a live-in aunt with exceptional insight, without whom her life would have seemed dull, not that it had been dull before. However, with EJ’s arrival, everything had changed, and what they had before now seemed lackluster in comparison. Despite all her help, Martha sensed something significant was on the horizon, according to her visions of her gift of “Sight.” 

If her visions were accurate, some of them were good, but not all of them. Exciting things were going to happen but in an unusual way.

“Thanks, Ma,” Robert replied.

“You’re welcome, son; go find your brothers and do your chores.”

“Sure, Ma,” said Robert as he put on his coat, knitted hat, and scarf gifted by his sisters. The warmth of their love for each other made him feel tingly inside. In contrast, EJ’s sisters hated their brothers, and the feeling was mutual. They seemed to have no souls left, and no one even knew if they had any to begin with. As a result, the sisters and their father would get coal in their stockings for Christmas, hoping it would warm their icy hearts. However, everyone doubted that even the fires of hell could do anything to help them.

  Julie was humming to herself in her room downstairs as Aunty M asked.

  Julie replied. “Oh, that is just something Bill taught me a few days

ago. He was― well, I cannot remember. Strange.” Come to think about it she could have learned it while visiting other realms and their people.”

Julie giggled and continued. “I miss him so much, Aunty M. Do you ever get lonely? I mean, not that you’re old, but do you?”

Aunty M smiled and replied. “Yes, dear, I know what you mean,” as

she brushed Julie’s hair. She chuckled, remembering what it was like to be in love for the first time. During the time with Mike, her late husband, when they too were young which seemed like a lifetime ago. That to had changed in so many ways. 

The boys were hard at work in the old red barn as it was their turn

to take care of the farm and the animals. They switched off with them

sisters, so they all had a fair share of the responsibility. The farm provided them with food and comfort, and they would be lost without it and the sounds of their animals. It had only been two weeks since they returned, and Will knew these moments would become precious memories. Like his brothers, he would miss these times, but for now, he would live in the moment and not worry about the future. 

Will picks up the pitchfork and starts lifting the hay they had grown over the summer, spreading it out over the large indoor corral of their seven horses and two cows. Will turns around to grab more hay as EJ brings over a fresh bale of hay and sits it down for Will to spread it out. He watched EJ bring over the brushes and start brushing down his colt. Aunty M and Pa had given him over the summer so that he would have his own horse just like the rest.

“EJ?” Will asks, watching EJ brushing down his colt in the barn

“Yes, Will?” EJ answers without pausing as he brushes along the firm lines of his brown colt, he had named Jackson.

“Do you?”

“Do I what?” EJ asked, continuing with his tasks, brushing out the

tangles in Jackson’s tail, trying to get his colt to hold still long enough

before he smacked him in the face with his tail and stamped impatiently,

wanting to run free with his fellow horse friends.

“Oh, nothing,” Will said, kicking the straw with his boot. He almost changed his mind about asking such a stupid or unimportant question. Yet curiosity always gets the better of him as he decides if this is really a suitable time to ask such questions. But EJ knew Will, for he and his brother Robert were inseparable. He loved that about that; having them in his life could not compare to the loneliness he had felt most of his life. 

Ever since he came to live with the Downing’s, almost a year has passed, yet it seemed to him that he now had a real family. One that cares about him and loves him more than life itself, including his brother Danny. Who has nobody, not even two sisters, back home where his biological family lives? Treat him as if he is nothing more than a disappointment and slave to do their bidding like they had done with him when he lived at home when he was not bouncing from home to the next in the State foster care system. Due to his parent’s abusive behavior, more so his father’s belt and his fists. Whenever the need arose, which was often, considering the genuine hate he had for him and his brother Danny, he hated knowing that, unlike his brother, he had a home and a family that loved him without a question in his mind.

“Come on now, Will. This is me you are talking to remember, after all we are brothers, we share everything, the bad and the good.” EJ thought. Mostly anyway. Considering the secret the Will was hiding for months or even longer. Not to mention his two sisters Julie and Anna not sharing their darkest secrets. He sighs inward at how much has changed from the standard of everyday life.

“I know- but.”

“But nothing.”

“Alright, I was just wondering what it is like to be you. Do you ever worry about them anymore, that is all?” Will asked while kicking the straw with his left foot.

“About whom, Will?” EJ asked, putting down the brush and patting

his colt.

“Them ghosts and shadows, you know?” Will being careful regarding things he can discuss with the knowledge he knows, watching the shadows on the walls. For even the shadows have ears.

EJ stops for a minute. “Tell you the truth, Will, I think about them

all the time. They are not done yet. We both know something is coming,

and you know who is still out there,” EJ said, watching Will and looking

at the shadows from inside the barn.

“I know, but EJ, you’re the only one that saw him.” Will said, kicking the straw. “It’s been almost a year since then,” EJ, thinking. “Has it really been that long?”

“True.” EJ was curious himself; maybe they had left him alone.

“But still doesn’t change anything for us,” Will says as he puts his arm around him and then throws him to the ground to wrestle in the hay below.

“Change what?” Robert asks, walking into the barn and seeing them with straw in their hair.

“Oh, nothing,” Will said as they smiled, pulling him down with

them, laughing on top of each other.

“We better get cleaned up, or Ma will skin us alive?” EJ said as the

boys picked the straw from each other’s hair. 

Ma seeing the boys coming into the house, Ma wipes the smudges

off their faces. “And what have you boys been up to?” She dares not to

ask if she knows her boys.

“Nothing, Ma, honest,” they replied, picking the rest of the straw off their shirts and hats, and hanging up their coats and hats on the hooks by the door and remembering to remove their shoes so they do not track mud and snow on their Ma’s nice new wooden floors.

“Go wash up,” she said, shaking her head and rolling her eyes.

“Yes, Ma,” they replied. “Sometimes I wonder about those three,”

she said as they pushed each other down the hall laughing. Yet she would not trade a single moment of their shared memories since EJ has become part of their family.

* * * *

EJ’s mother, Linda Stuart, looking around their house’s living room, said, “I think we will put it right here this year,” she said. Finding a spot “And when are you going to get my tree, Jim?” She puts her hand son her hips and stares him down. “I am not getting any younger, and

the kids will not wait much longer. I want to have a nice Christmas just

the―” Not being able to finish the last train of thought without tearing up and putting her hands to her face in tears. “The five of us,” she whispers, looking down the road. Wanting to say so disparately,” the six of us.” But she could not get the words out. Even though her son EJ had spent more time living outside the home, in one of the State Foster homes since the age of six, they were only a few months at a time, nothing longer than two or three months at a time.

It had begun almost two weeks after Jim’s father and the children’s only living grandfather died. The other one never really counted, never agreeing completely with her stepfather, and she had not seen him in years. The moment she moved out on her own at the early age of sixteen was the last and only time she had ever seen him.

Jim reluctantly tries to comfort his wife, although he is not in the

mood. He shrugs and looks down the hall towards the children’s room.

“He’s fine, dear,” he says, rolling his eyes. “They promised you could

see him this week” As he slowly walks away down the hall, he shakes his head and mutters to himself. “Now she wants a God damn Christmas

tree; what’s next” He hated the holidays, especially family gatherings,

and would prefer if everyone left him and his family alone. He is content with just his wife and two daughters. His other son is bothersome and worthless to him, and he can barely remember his name most days. He only knows it starts with a “D” or another cursed alphabet letter. “Not that it was that important,” he mutters. He should be dead and forgotten too.” And if he gets his way, they both will be very soon. If he must do it himself. It will be done, God damn it, it will be done. He growled inward may they both rot in hell.

Too find out what's going to happen next you need to get yourself a copy of the book on Amzon.com or go to your bookstore.

Author's Note

This book was published in September 2024.