Peregrine

A wicked, evil wind flew past Peregrine as he opened his electric silver eyes. They matched his full-moon Warlock tattoo indefinitely. He struggled to keep a clutching hold on the sloping, jagged mountain he was perched on the peak of. It was obvious the mountain—Soul Mountain—didn’t want him here.

The seconds clicked by as everything slid into place.

Click! It was New Year’s Eve—or if you were a member of the Shadow World, it was Souls’ Night.

Click! This was the night the Souls from all the newly Marked Shadow World beings are released.

Click! All the Souls would rise from Soul Mountain.

Click! And those newly Marked would have to find their Souls—but there is no definite way of capturing their Soul.

Click! They had from the eerie strike of midnight to dawn to find their Soul.

Click! And if they failed . . .

Click! They died.

Not a single Shadow World being can permanently live without a Soul. The Shadow World members—old members, mind you—that are still around today have gone through this task. This task is also the reason there are so few members.

The newly Marked (a fancy word for “picked”) members are granted free life until Souls’ Night—but it is a cold, hollow life. It’s hard living without a Soul.

And nearly impossible.

Some Marked people fall into insanity or a deep depression—in which they later killed themselves, before the evil of Souls’ Night got them.

The whole process of Marking—wait, let’s rephrase that. Everything supernatural the humans, aka the lucky bastards, don’t know. They are efficiently kept out of the loop. If a Shadow World being threatens the security of his or her world, they are killed. No questions. Anyone associated with the event, too. They are killed—no questions or defences thrown.

This is probably why there are only about a thousand Shadow World members around the globe. The sheer lack of numbers made it easier to steal away from the humans, too. Around a thousand people are Marked every year. Only about one person in that thousand makes the mission, though. And on top of that, Shadow World beings are murdered, some lose their power, others go insane, and some just . . . die. One person succeeds . . . one new Shadow World being every millennium.

Peregrine didn’t expect to come out of this alive—or partly alive, as some would say. You had to go through a deadly trial for your Soul, and even if you get it back, it’s going to be tarnished.

Have you ever heard of ghosts? Yeah, well, guess what they come from?

They’re the roaming Souls of those who failed the mission.

And there’s a lot of ghosts.