✧ Before the Fall ✧
✧ Before the Fall ✧
For centuries, Vampires, Lycans, and sorcerers existed beneath an uneasy peace.
Twelve islands stood at the heart of their world.
To the east lay the two islands of Avolon, the hidden kingdom of sorcerers, where magic ran through blood as freely as the tides surrounding its shores.
The people of Avolon kept apart from the other kingdoms.
They cared little for foreign crowns.
Old rivalries.
The petty ambitions of kings.
So long as their sacred lands remained untouched, the sorcerers were content to leave the rest of the world to its wars.
To the south lay the five Vampire Kingdoms:
Solane.
Varun.
Amor.
Evel.
Oriana.
Though united by blood, the Vampire kings were rarely united in purpose.
Their kingdoms were built upon Houses—ancient lineages bound by inheritance, reputation, and power.
Every insult was remembered.
Every debt inherited.
Every king believed his House more deserving of greatness than the others.
Pride kept them divided.
Greed kept them watchful.
Ambition ensured peace between them was never more than temporary.
Beyond their shores lay the five Lycan territories:
Selma.
Emrys.
Iana.
Albion.
Lyvara.
The Lycans belonged not to Houses, but to Clans.
Their loyalties were forged through kinship, survival, and blood willingly shed for one another.
Vampires called them wild.
Uncivilized.
Beasts dressed in the shape of men.
Yet the Lycans desired peace no less than anyone else.
For a time, peace endured.
Then the old rulers died.
Their heirs inherited crowns, territories, and centuries of resentment.
They were young.
Hungry.
Certain the world belonged to them.
For the first time in generations, the five Vampire kings set aside their rivalries and forged an alliance.
War followed.
Avolon was the first kingdom they chose to destroy.
The sorcerers fought with everything they possessed.
They split the earth beneath Vampire armies.
Called storms from clear skies.
Burned entire fleets before the ships could reach their shores.
It was not enough.
Magic could slaughter hundreds.
Five united kingdoms could send thousands more.
The first island of Avolon fell beneath blood and ash.
Its temples burned.
Its cities collapsed beneath invasion.
Survivors fled across the water to the second and final island while the Vampire fleets closed around them.
There, with the last of Avolon surrounded and invasion only days away, the king summoned the most powerful mages still living.
He gave them one command.
Save what remained of their people.
On the eve of the final assault, Avolon vanished.
Not conquered.
Not destroyed.
Gone.
The sea closed around the place where the final island had stood, leaving nothing but open water and a silence no sorcery could penetrate.
For years, the Vampire kings searched for the lost kingdom.
Their ships crossed every surrounding current.
Their scholars tore apart ancient maps.
Captured sorcerers were questioned until they had no voices left with which to answer.
Nothing revealed Avolon.
In time, the lost kingdom faded into myth.
Spoken of in forbidden texts.
Sailors’ tales.
Drunken whispers.
Denied their first prize, the Vampire kings turned toward the Lycans.
The conquest lasted five hundred years.
Territory after territory fell beneath Vampire rule.
Clan settlements were burned.
Families were torn apart.
Children were taken from their mothers.
Warriors were bound in silver and dragged from their homes.
High Chiefs and Clan Leaders were executed before their own people, their bodies displayed as warnings to any Lycan who still believed freedom possible.
When the final Lycan territory fell, its people were driven into slavery.
They were bought.
Sold.
Bred.
Worked until their bodies failed and discarded when they could no longer serve.
Generations were born beneath Vampire rule.
Generations died without ever knowing freedom.
The Vampire Houses prospered upon their suffering.
But Lycans were never meant to live on their knees.
For two hundred years, the Clans waited.
They remembered their bloodlines.
Carried forbidden names in whispers.
Taught their children which territories had once belonged to them and which graves held leaders the Vampires had tried to erase from history.
They watched.
They endured.
And when a new generation of Vampire kings took their crowns, the Lycans rose.
The Second Great War consumed the islands for one hundred and fifty years.
Fields burned black.
Cities starved behind their walls.
Prisoners were butchered in retaliation for battles fought hundreds of miles away.
The sea carried bodies from one shore to another until sailors claimed even the water smelled of death.
Neither side could claim victory.
Neither side was willing to admit defeat.
Then, during a Lycan raid upon the kingdom of Amor, a Vampire king was killed.
His death changed everything.
His son inherited the throne and a kingdom already bleeding itself empty.
He, one other Vampire king, and the ancient Elders called for peace.
Messengers crossed the war-torn seas beneath white banners.
Some were permitted to pass.
Others were returned in pieces.
Still, the message reached every kingdom and territory.
For the first time in centuries, the kings of the Vampire Houses and the leaders of the Lycan Clans agreed to stand beneath the same roof.
The summit would take place upon the last neutral territory among the eleven islands still visible to them.
An island the Vampires had conquered long ago.
An island they had renamed:
Dragomir.
There, beneath crystal chandeliers and the eyes of kings, High Chiefs, and Clan Leaders, the fate of every House, every Clan, and every contested territory would begin to be decided.
