Something Wicked ｡ Nicholas Scratch

― prologue

00. | A BLOODY NIGHT
❝ blood will spill tonight.❞

Whispered among the ancient witches of old, there was a tale that had been passed down through generations about a youngling that would consume the souls of men that walked the sands of time and bled blue. A tale that foretold the ending of life and death itself. A tale that would come along with the birth of a child with a dark heart and the murder of a mother as her tears soaked the dry sands and created lakes of salt where creatures of the deep would hide. This tale, told around fires of white ash and rituals that blessed the coming harvests. This tale, a prophecy some might claim, had become nothing more than an old wives tale. Nothing but a story told to young witches that would ascend into the Church of Dusk when their sixteenth birthday came to pass. Nothing but a tale lost in time. 

By the moon's ghosty light on the first moon of the summertime, there was a ritual taking place in the deep sandy deserts in the middle of dead mans hills. Witches and warlocks had come from far lands to witness the night four children would take their stance in the coven and bid away their life to forever and always, serve the Dark Lord himself.  

Four children, shy of sixteen by minutes would stand together with their hands tied and their breathing steady, for these children had grown up in the shadows and knew the life they were about to choose. For many years, the decision to take the Path of Light or the Path of Darkness came down to this moment in time. Each child knew their own destiny, for it had been written in the stars above since the dawn of time. 

Many Dark Baptisms had occurred across all the lands and for the Church of Dusk, tonight was like no other night where the coven would claim their new younglings and promise them a new dark world that they could call their own. However, unknown to all but one, a battered old witch with half her eyesight missing and her heart divided in two, tonight was much more sinister. 

Soft chanting had echoed through the dry lands, witches and warlocks welcoming the new night where four would rise in the blood of the Beast and sign the book that would hold their soul to him for all eternity. Fire light flickered to a standstill as the wind died down, the air stale and thick around the coven dressed in their very best black. Four children crept closer to the alter, each one trying to remain calm but feeling the heavy beat of their hearts knocking louder and louder on their ribcages. 

Above their heads, the clouds parted like ocean waves and blue light from the old moon and the new, bled down upon them. One witch had pulled her half sight away from the four children standing in the centre of the circle, blood dripping down their foreheads as they recited the vows they would soon behold until death. 

That old witch, watched with watery sight as the old moon cradled the new moon in its arms and a strange calm washed over her limbs as she was reminded about an old tale her grandmother had once told her about, many long years ago. A tale about a youngling that would bring all of life and death to its knees and how that tale had begun with the painted picture of the old moon dying in the arms of the new, and how that chosen night would end in foul bloodshed that would soak the grounds to make way for a new day. 

"Blood will spill tonight." Nobody heard the old witch's words, for the chanting had erupted into ghostly song as each child signed away their name in the Book of Beast. Blue moonlight shone down upon one child in particular, a spotlight of truth and destiny. 

As soon as the blood dried and the moon's light paved a new tale, the very one many witches in the coven had come to forget, that was when one child's eyes glassed over with blue light and her mouth opened wide as words nobody had ever heard before floated out.

The haunting wails of witches and warlocks came next, the deaths of the innocent and damned dampening the dry lands below. That was the night an old tale that many thought was nothing but a myth had become a prophecy that would shake the world to its core and every single life would be in danger. A prophecy  from the southern lands, that would soon enough find its way to Greendale.