Co-owned by DyingHere and OhhMyGeeABumbleBee
Inspired by - The House Of Night, Darren Shan and The Host

About:
Yes, it's a very long read - but it's worth it!

For longer than anyone can remember, there has been a tradition. No one knows how it came to be, and no one really knows why, but every year, in the middle of the tenth month, it happens. Forty-eight children between eleven and thirteen years old are Chosen - marked with a unique tattoo on the back of their right hand. It is not understood how it gets there, and it cannot be removed; being a child who has been Chosen can only mean one thing - that sometime between 28th and 31st October, you will be snatched away from your home, your family, your life, and you will never be seen again.

But, contrary to popular belief, the story doesn't end there. The Chosen kids, who are now to be referred to as Fledglings, are escorted by Initiates - who were once Fledglings themselves - to a collection of caves deep beneath the city. Once there, the Fledglings meet a group of people who call themselves Gabriels, who they will be taught by. The Gabriels come across as Angels, whose sole purpose is to guide the Fledglings into the light that, they believe, they were beginning to leave behind in their previous life.

Well, that's all fine and dandy, except for one little problem - there's a catch. Over the first four years of life as a Fledgling, most of them reject the tattoos their Goddess, Dea, gave them, and die. By Second Year, there are only twenty-four of the original forty-eight remaining; Third Year has only twelve, and Fourth Year sees only four kids prepare to complete their years as Fledglings.

They do this via Initiation. At the stroke of midnight on 28th October, the Elders - ancient Gabriels who are the direct descendants of the 'Angels' who founded this establishment - send the four Fledglings up into the city to collect the newly Chosen forty-eight, - twelve children each - and give them a time-limit of forty-eight hours. This may sound easy, but the Chosen children are protected - by supposed Demons.

If a Fledgling manages to collect his twelve and remain unharmed by the Demons by midnight on the 30th, the children will take their places as First Year Fledglings, and he will move on to be a First Grade Initiate - causing the tattoo on the back of his hand to expand or change. However, if a Fledgling fails to bring his twelve back to the Elders, he simply disappears, and the remaining students - Fledglings, Initiates, and lower-ranking Gabriels alike - are informed that the Fourth Year Fledgling's tattoo rejected him a year late, or that the humans discovered his identity and killed him.

But, yet again, this is not the end - or the truth. What really happens to the poor, failed Fledgling, is far more terrible than being rejected by his tattoo and his Goddess. The Elders force him through a portal that they believe kills him horribly and painfully - and he ends up in another world.

This world is very similar to our world - the streets are the same, the buildings are the same - but it is completely devoid of anything living or materialistic. Tormented by the lack of company and food - although, technically, in this world he doesn't need it - the Fledgling is driven mad, and eventually becomes one of the Shadow People; dark, sinister creatures that live in the shadows of this most backwards of worlds and feed off the fear of other failed Fledglings.

That is how it has worked for centuries; millennia; since the beginning of time. Only this year, there's a difference.

The four Fledglings that made it to their Fourth Year are very close friends - something which hardly ever happens, and which poses a threat to the Elders; normally the final four are estranged, and are therefore unlikely to help each other in their task of finding the Chosen children. They are also unusually gifted and, in the Elders' opinions, way too smart for their own good. Thus, even though all four Fledglings bring back their twelve Chosen children and complete the Initiation by getting their tattoos expanded, the Elders bundle them off to the Other World anyway and tell the rest of the establishment that they failed and died, either at the hands of humans or Dea.

However, when the four Fledglings turn up in the Other World, they are bonded by their friendship and are able to resist the Shadow People's tempting call to join them. Thus managing to maintain a hold on their humanity, the four Fledglings realise that they are no longer blind to the Elders' ways, and come to see that it is, in fact, the Gabriels who are the Demons, and the creatures who protect the Chosen children who are the Angels. Now they must find a way to break back through to Reality and warn the rest of the Fledglings of the sinister motives behind the Gabriels' kindness before it is too late.