Chapter 1: 12 hours earlier.

Alyssa arrived in the town of Cill Kenna just as the sun was starting to set. The bus stopped in front of her new university. The main building was massive, about 50 foot tall. It was made of smooth stone and the entrance was covered by an overhang held up by old Victorian style pillars. She dragged her suitcases up the stone stares and past the large wooden double doors into a large hall. The place was jammed. Great, Alyssa thought as she tried to swim through the crowds. She had hoped that arriving late would mean that the fresher mobs would have died down. She grumbled in self pity and pushed her way into the queue for the check-in desk.

“Alyssa Donovan”, she said when she reached the desk.

The short, plump woman sitting in front of her handed her the keys to her dorm and an informational leaflet and gave her directions. She left the hall out the back entrance and made her way across the campus grounds towards the student block. The campus was small compared to most other universities, but all the buildings were extremely old looking and similar to the first one she had been in. She opened the door of the student building and made her way up the stairs. She was in room four of apartment twenty-two. Her room was three stories up. Great, she sighed, why did she always get stuck on the top floor. She was breathing heavily from lifting her suitcases up all the stairs by the time she reached her apartment. Inside there was a hallway with two doors on each side. These would be the bedrooms. At the end of the hall was another door leading to the sitting area and kitchen. She slipped into her own room trying to be quiet as she could hear the voices of what she assumed were her new flat-mates in the kitchen. She didn’t have time to play around with them. She came to this place for a reason. The room was better than she expected. It looked like it had been refurbished recently with contrasted with the ancient looking outside of the building. She didn’t bother unpack her suitcases and just threw them in a bunch in the corner of the room. It was time for sleep, she thought excitedly as her back hit the mattress. Soon she was asleep, or she appeared to be asleep anyway.

Alyssa looked down at her own body lying on the bed. She turned in her corporeal form and walked through her window. She had named this power nightwalking. She had been able to nightwalk as far back as she could remember. It was as natural as normal sleep to her. In this state she was able to walk through solid objects and was invisible to everyone. She fell to the ground; however, the drop had no effect on her body. Nothing could affect her when she was like this. Although the downside to this was that she could not affect anything either. There was still a lot of people out, it was only about ten o`clock. Though she supposed the night would be alive with people here, especially for the first week, not that it really bothered her. She would have no affect on them anyway and more importantly they would have no effect on her. Now she had to find Tye.

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Tye was her best friend. He was what made her power bearable. Her first memories of nightwalking are from when she was around four years old. For the next eight years she wandered at night alone. She remembered the incredible loneliness and boredom she felt at night. It was tough being alone every night and never able to sleep like a normal person. She remembered trying to tell her parents about what she was experiencing. However, they just told her that she was dreaming and then started getting angry. Telling her not to make up lies and just go to sleep. Eventually she learned that telling people about her nightwalking wasn’t a good idea. She would sit in her room and sob at night, not able to cry in her nightly form. Back then she was afraid to leave her room, incase someone saw her or she got hurt or she saw something she shouldn’t. She didn’t understand her own powers back then. That was when she met Tye.

She was around twelve years old then. He found her sobbing as usual in her room. She remembered screaming when he leapt in through her wall. When he had calmed her down, he explained that he was like her. She was cautious at first but he came back every night to talk and she slowly began to trust him. He convinced her to leave her room and taught her what she could and couldn’t do.

She found him in the spot that they had agreed beside the bus stop. He was tall and quite muscular. His hair was dark brown, and his eyes were bright blue. He looked in his late teens or early twenties, but Alyssa knew that he was much older. He was like her. But he wasn’t exactly the same. He was dead. A real ghost. He had the same powers as her when he was alive. He had died in his sleep when he was nightwalking and had been nightwalking ever since. You couldn’t simply stop nightwalking you see. It was like normal sleep. It only stopped when you were woken up.

He waved and grinned stupidly as he saw her approach.

“What took you so long”, he said with his arms crossed.

“It was hard to sleep with all the noise”

He laughed and slapped the back of her head, “Well then lets go explore, you said you came here for a reason right?”

She turned to lead the way and grumbled, “You know I don’t like you doing that”.