I know it's tacky to write notes at the beginning of stories. I also know it's tacky to write the chapter numbers at the top of the chapters... BUT. This story is very special to me. I'll do whatever the heck I want with it.

Sorry for being rude. Really, I'm not entirely sure ifI even want this story on fictionpress. So far it's kind of been by invitation only. I let you read it if I want you to read it. That way I don't get bunches of people gushing about how great it is. I want honest opinions. I really believe this story is special, not like that other junk I write... I dunno if I want it on here. Hmm.

I'll try out a few chapters for now. We'll see what happens. (Also, the story is not as boring as this prologue... it's just that it's set in a world with rules. Rules that are different from ours.)

Prologue

There are three types of magic in the world. There is life magic, which is found in every good and living thing. It's found in newborn babies, growing plants, laughter, love, happiness, and all other things pertaining to life. There is death magic, which accounts for every bad thing. It is the magic of disease, corruption, death, sadness, hatred, greed, and any form of evil you can think of.

But of course, in the tradition of classifying things as good and evil, just and wrong, there is a grey area. The magic of neither death nor life still needs to be classified. This includes levitation, secret potions, magic mirrors, and all those things you think of when I say "magical". However fascinating grey magic is, it isn't important right now. Maybe someday, there will be a book written about grey magic, but that is not this book.

While life magic is found in all things, death magic can only be possessed by demons - evil spirits that cause all sorts of chaos, destruction, and other wicked events to occur, such as horrible plagues, earthquakes, murders, and other dreadful things. They are only spirits, however, and cannot touch, move, or hurt anything in the physical world. They can influence things, sure, but they cannot do anything physical because they are not physical beings. To do things in the physical realm, they use the "undead", also called half-spirits or demon children. These half-spirits are born of human mothers and demon fathers, called hosts.

Once a year, demons produce seeds. They only produce one seed a year, and it only produces one half-spirit. The demons place the seed in the womb of a human woman, who carries the demon child until it is time to be born. On that day, it will burst out of its mother's womb, killing her in the process.

Every year, each demon plants one seed and reaps one demon child. Their children never die, because they were never technically alive. They are only animated by absorbing life energy - the life magic naturally produced by each and every living being. The energy is radiated by all plants, animals, and humans, but mostly by humans, where it is created in great quantities within the soul. By demon children absorbing this energy, the living are not hurt because they naturally release it anyway.

Death magic cannot produce anything that lives. To be animated, and to remain animated, demons and their children have to consume the life energy of living beings. Since half-spirits are half human, they do not need as much life energy as their hosts do. But the demons must consume lots of life energy, more than they can obtain simply by absorbing it. They have to steal life from humans by taking the source of their energy - their soul.

This presents a problem. Demons need to kill living beings and take their souls, but they cannot physically harm them. They work around this two ways - they either have their children harvest souls for them, or they buy souls from people who offer them.

In return for selling their soul to the demons, these people are given the power to summon and control demons at will. They earn the right to call themselves sorcerers and are given a magic far beyond what they can have on their own - death magic.

The sorcerers (or Demon Masters, as those of the death magic know them) are still living beings, and a long time ago they realized that the demons were using the half-spirits to kill their fellow people and they were terrified. The demons couldn't "live" without killing, and the Masters would have no powers without them, so they proposed an agreement.

Demons could not kill unless the moon was red (or orange, or even a dark yellow - the terms broadened over time). When it was coloured, however, they could kill however many people they wanted. The moon was rarely any other colour than white, and when it was, the demons weren't allowed to kill the sorcerer’s loved ones.

The demons agreed.

It was into this world of death magic and life magic, demons and sorcerers, that Lyle was born.

Only his heart never beat. His veins never filled with blood. His skin never flushed with colour. He was never alive.

He was born under Geinhotz the demon. A half spirit. A demon child.