Prologue: The Beginning
In the heart of Zytheris, humans and fae alike lived in harmony. They learned about each other and would often spend hours in the forests looking out for each other and forming bonds that could rival any siblings.
Then, one day, human towns were burnt down by fires laced with fae magic. Several lives were lost in those fires and human numbers kept dwindling, but the chiefess had kept trying to reason with the fae to plead with them to stop. But then, the fae pushed her over the edge.
She was returning home from a meeting in another town to see if her people had managed to repair even a little bit of the town, but once she got there, she stopped dead in her tracks and her blood ran cold.
Her town, her home, was burnt to the ground. Not a single stone house stood. Only fae could burn the stones that were used to build.
Without a person in sight, she ran through the remains of what was, calling out to see if any of her people had managed to survive the fire when she heard footsteps.
Turning around, she breathed a sigh of relief and ran to her daughter who stood there unscathed.
However, her daughter did not return the embrace and instead pushed her mother away.
Hurt and confused, her mother tried to ask her why she did such a thing, and her daughter simply laughed; it was a cold, cruel sound, and unlike her daughter’s usual happy, cheerful tone.
Her daughter picked up the bow that had been lying on the ground and simply smirked before she drew the bow. She was rooted to the spot as every muscle in her body screamed at her to move out the way, but her legs would not obey and as she opened her mouth to shout, her daughter let the arrow fly and it pierced her heart.
She fell to the ground and her daughter transformed into a fae before walking away, back to their own village.
