"Skylar...Skylar please...Skylar! Wake up!" Adriana couldn't see through the tears that blurred her vision, she couldn't hear anything except her own screams, her own racing heart, her own terror. She shook Skylar repeatedly, trying not to look at the wound in her shoulder, and then realized what a complete idiot she was being.

        I'm not doing anything productive by sitting here screaming. She needs a hospital. Now.

        Adriana gathered her friend up in her arms and ran as fast as she could towards the castle. She didn't even concentrate on the shocked faces of the villagers she passed as she ran under the torchlights, she didn't even try using her own powers---what good would dark powers be at a time like this? She kept her head down and kept running, trying and failing to keep herself together as she ran. 

        When she finally reached the castle, she found Rissa at the front doors, her eyes wide and her teeth clenched.

        "Adriana---"

        "Get out of my way." Adriana growled, pushing past her aunt and running towards the hospital wing. She wasn't about to let Rissa's false assumptions keep Skylar from surviving.

        When she reached the hospital wing, Jasmine was sitting at her desk, writing on a piece of paper. The nurse's head jolted up the moment Adriana crashed through the door, and she gasped upon seeing Skylar's motionless body.

        "Help her. Please. Help. She. Gun. Shot. Wound. I..." Adriana knew she wasn't making sense but she couldn't find the words to describe her pain. "Please. Help her." she whispered before sprinting away, cheeks wet with tears and hands ripping at her hair in agony.

***

        Dawn had never been in the castle library before. She had never even seen most of the books held in the silent room. The library was usually empty, but Dawn remembered a time when she would often see her mother disappear into the library for hours on end. When Lisabeth would emerge, Dawn remembered asking her what she had been doing. Lisabeth would answer, without fail, "Stepping into a world much different than ours.", a small smile on her face. Dawn had always wondered what that had meant.

        But Dawn wasn't in the library to jump into a different world today. No. She was in there to find out more about her own world.

        A book was lying open on one of the tables. Dawn remembered Adriana's words to her, on the night that everything started spiraling out of control: "I researched these tattoos, Dawn. Rissa has novels about them. They're called "juyts". They don't stay one color our entire lives. They just dictate where we're the strongest. Mine was black at birth and stayed black because everyone believed I would control the night. Everyone thought I was the Dark one, so I myself began to believe it. You've always believed that you're the Light one. But what if we were switched?"

        What if we were switched?

        Dawn picked up the book and looked at the page it was on. It must have been the same book that Adriana had used to research the tattoos, because the title of the page was "Juyts: The Legends and the Facts".

        Dawn sat down on one of the dusty old chairs and pulled the book closer to her. If she wanted to be sure of herseld, she had to know what these juyts meant.

        Not so long ago, Gregoria wasn't the only kingdom there was. Ariesia was the rival kingdom, and the two were unable to be reasoned with in terms of power. Both were strong in their armies and royal families, but neither was willing to back down to the other.

        Their rivalry continued for many years, until Gregoria decided to take matters into their own hands. In the dead of night, they snuck into Ariesia and killed the entire royal family. The citizens of Ariesia did one of two things: they either fled to the mountains surrounding the two kingdoms, or they moved to Gregoria, pretending to have been a citizen of the kingdom their entire lives.

        Ariesia was completely and utterly destroyed, but not by gunfire. By fear. No one wanted to go against Gregoria anymore, and so they were on their own. 

        But not without a curse.

        Because of the cowardly way that they destroyed Ariesia, Gregoria was cursed with juyts, tattoos with the power to both destroy and to recreate. The juyts would be bestowed upon the seventh in the royal line, and the seventh will be twins. They will both be cursed with these juyts, one for the Light and one for the Dark. But the juyts do not determine their power.

        The children themselves do.

        The child born with the Dark juyt will not be Dark for their entire life. They will be able to control the night until they realize their potential to control more, and their potential to change their juyt. But if one is changed, so is the other. There cannot exist two Light juyts side by side, and there cannot exist two Dark juyts side by side. The juyts would be a reflection of the way the children thought of themselves and the way the society around them thought of them. They can, however, be switched. As the color darkens, the child with that juyt is no longer Light. They are Middle, and they have the power to control nothing. Once they have turned to one side completely and utterly, by their own choice, the color will stay, never to be changed again. But the other twin will get no say in the matter. And this is known to create rivalries among even the closest of families. 

        The juyts will not determine the children's destinies. Their actions and beliefs will instead have the power to turn them as they grow up. But once the change is made, they have no power to change it back. The Dark child will be Dark forever. And if the Light child turns Dark, they will know. And they will be powerless to fix it.

        Dawn looked down at her own "juyt" to check that she was still Light. The tattoo was as white as it had always been, and she breathed out a sigh of relief.

        But as she got up to put the book on a shelf, what she didn't see was the lines slowly darkening, from the outside to the inside, as her heart hardened and her mind started to lean towards the Dark.

---

A/N: So I decided to be nice and not make Adriana the one who got shot.

I officially finished writing the plot of this book. As long as I don't change anything, it should be about 25 chapters total. Maybe I can get to 2k reads by then!

I hope you enjoyed this chapter! Make sure to vote, comment, and check out my newest story, "Behind These Walls"!

-Katherine