Trigger warning and Prologue:
Trigger warning list:
The following triggers will be in the book. Please read through the list and make sure you know what all of these words mean. Your mental health matters.
“Right, apparently I need to warn you about all the terrible things you’re about to experience, so buckle up, because I was told this is going to be a long one.”
Alcoholism. Attempted murder. Arson. Bullying. Burning. Blood and gore depiction.
Cannibalism — mention only. “Okay... Did she just say cannibalism will be mentioned? You know what? I’m not even going to ask.”
Child abuse — hinted. Desperation. Decapitation. Explicit sex — only a few chapters. Fire. Forced into a mating contract. Graphic mutilation. Graphic torture. Grief and loss. Knotting. Manipulation. Murder. Needles. Obsessive behavior. Poverty. Profanity. Pregnancy. PTSD. Primal play.
“Okay, so Natasha was not joking. This list is getting long.”
Rejection. Self-poisoning — not for suicidal intentions. Sexism. Violence. War. Zoophilia — only mentioned.
If you look at this list as a checklist, or even a menu, for what you’re about to read, then welcome home, love.
A woman wiser than me once told me, “correct your crown, my dear. You’re letting it slip.” — M. Steyl.
So, love, no matter what you are going through, hold your head up high and know your own worth.
Now, let’s go back to where it all began.
Prologue.
In the year called B.E., or as the common folk called them, the Red Years, there was only war, pain, and bloodshed.
Eight kings decided that they alone held their fate in their hands, and they would take what they believed they were owed.
The Earth and the Moon came together to stop the ground from remaining in a permanent state of red. The Moon and the Earth paid in compromise, innocence, and above all, fairness.
But the last price still needed to be paid by the kings for creating this problem, because unchecked power would no longer be tolerated.
The price was high, and the Earth and Moon knew the kings would never willingly pay it, so they tricked them.
With whispered words of more power than they held now, and the promise that they would rule over all eight lands, each king agreed and gave the last blood that would be spilled that year.
It was said by the scholars that the kings fell into a deep sleep for one year, a cycle now known as the Rebirth Year.
When they woke,they were not the same.
Marks marred their bodies, glowing at unknown times. Their ambitions to rule and conquer were gone. They treated their families as outsiders and had no sense of humor or time for hovering.
The eight came together for the first time as one and wore cloaks that covered their bodies.
They were now known as the Eight Elders.
Blood, pain, and war were a thing of the past.
That was the beginning of the years known as A.E.
The years that followed, the Earth and Moon watched and saw that their plan had worked. But as one generation of Elders replaced the next, the magic that bound the Elders marks grew weaker, and the fear of what the balance now needed grew stronger.
Because magic always has a cost.
And it always asks for balance.
The Earth and the Moon thought they could outsmart the cost of that balance.
Because how can there be two that become one, only for that one to become three, and then another one?
