Shadows of a Life

Prologue

     Klaus flipped through one of his many spellbooks. The candles cast a dim light over the worn pages. He blew his short choppy, silver hair out of his face, scanning the page, looking for one specific spell. With a sudden snap of two ends of a book colliding, Klaus stood up. His appearance wasn't ordinary to a mortal's eye. Klaus' eyes shone a bright red, but where the whites should be, there was only charcoal black. He wore a simple shirt, pants and boots that all held a different shade of grey. On top of that he wore a long trench coat, black as night, that trailed down to his knees. His skin wasn't the normal shade of brown or olive that humans seemed to carry, but instead, a light shade of grey, common to his species.

     Klaus grabbed the spellbook that he had been searching desperately through and chucked it out the window of the tower he was standing in. The book feel from the top of the stone tower until it hit the unforgiving ground with a considerable "whump". Klaus walked over to his bookshelf which was an organized disaster. Books were open, page down all over it, and pages torn out littered every open space. It took him a few minutes before he selected one hoping he would have more luck with this book. Klaus dropped the book on his old wooden study. Sitting back down in his chair, he flipped through the pages scanning for spells. Without luck, he chucked this book out the window halfheartedly as well. Klaus went over to his shelf an proceeded to find another title.

     The candles lit with bright, spontaneous purple flames, cast an eerie violet light on the small tower he was in. Klaus nearly tipped over the book shelf with rage. Not a single book seemed to have what spell he was desperately looking for. Well, not any book that had perfectly safe and legal spells was. Klaus summoned a huge black book from the shadows. The cover was so worn that the title was no longer legible. The edges of the book were rounded and the pages were browned and torn in some parts. The book floated next to him suspended in the air by the shadows it was manipulating.Klaus flipped through pages of forbidden spells and potions, untill he came across one.

     Klaus started speaking rapid fire incantation, not stopping to breath or even blink. Focus was important when casting spells because if you lost focus, even for a second, the spell could go terribly wrong. After completing the incantation, nothing happened. Unimpressed, Klaus considered throwing this book out the window as well, but decided that the book would have very much disliked that. Unlike most spellbooks, this one, was capable of having feelings, so to save himself from having a very powerful book against him, Klaus let the book sink back into the shadows. He paced around the room wondering what went wrong with the incantation. It took him a while before he noticed the twin sisters, about the age of six from their appearance, who were sitting on his study. Both had dark grey skin, bright silver hair and simple grey clothes. Their eyes gleamed, one of them having a pair of red ones, and the other adorned with one purple, and one red.