Prologue
Alone on the outskirts of Pria’s ruined lands was a remote cottage as quaint as the lush meadows it stood in. And in this cottage lived a quiet Sorceress, unattainable to the world outside the meadow’s forest barrier.
Unpredictable, unapproachable. Far too silent for anyone’s liking, for one’s heard even a sigh from her in decades. Yet this was the same powerful Sorceress that had wiped thousands of people from existence, leaving nothing behind but destruction and misery in its wake.
Because this tiny village had not always been a village. It was once a large and boisterous multicultural town, busy with trades, markets, various forms of entertainment, and all walks of life. Over a century prior, The Sorceress had violently cleared the space she resided in now with ash and ice.
A town of twenty-thousand, now down to a mere one-thousand.
There were plenty of rumors that still circled around that tragedy, rumors that spread across the nation and beyond its borders. The most popular being that The Sorceress was insane, naturally. The locals stated she’s nothing but a cold heart. The epitome of pure evil. To this day, parents told their children all sorts of horror stories as a means to ensure they don’t cross the forest threshold, or go too far off into the meadow. Mothers use The Sorceress as an example to their daughters when they misbehaved, because no little girl wants to be compared to such a terrible entity, even if she may be having a bad day.
Still, The Sorceress makes small appearances in town. She comes wandering into the marketplace every month for fresh meat, produce, and grain—limited as they were, though no one stood in her way while she emptied each stall for herself. Even witches still needed to eat.
She would fit everything into one bag—its size large enough to normally accommodate maybe a few heads of lettuce. But this bag was special; it swallowed everything from multiple packages of meats, vegetables and fruit, and an entire ten pound package of rice. That bag never bulged either. She would carry it over her shoulders like it weighed nothing more than a sack of feathers.
No one dared question it. It was always an interesting, yet tense sight, to see her out and about. How she performed her abilities was fascinating, but would forever remain eerily mysterious to the common folk.
The Sorceress kept her head and the lower half of her face hidden with scarves. Her eyes stood out—big and bold, the irises matching the black of her pupils and thick brows— intimidatingly cold. There was no hint of compassion in them, for any of the thousands that continued to suffer around her.
She was much like her magic—strange and soulless.
On the occasional day when warm light peeked out from behind gray clouds, The Sorceress wore dresses without sleeves, exposing the white Sun-Rays tattoo on her right shoulder, a common symbol of radiance and peace among the former Sanyaran Kingdom’s royalty. It was both ironic and stunningly eye-catching against her golden skin, giving her an air of regal quality, even while her face was still masked with scarves.
However this begged the question: Who exactly was she? What was she? And why would such a powerful sorceress remain in a lone cottage outside a poor village by herself for a century when there was the rest of the whole world out there for her to conquer?
A world she could rule as a God, if she wanted?
A mystery. It was all one big frightening mystery.
Magic wielders of any kind were a forbidden existence. Their power, temper, and lack of control has proven, throughout history, to be catastrophic.
And The Sorceress proved to be history’s most current catastrophe.
She remains a paradigm of terror and intrigue. No one knows who she is, or what she looks like, or what her purpose is, other than what they hear by word of mouth.
Today marks the 103rd anniversary of Pria’s tragedy. No one living today was alive to see it take place.
We consider ourselves lucky.
Though we will still suffer.
As long as The Sorceress still lives.
-A. Ilsah
25 Mae 1555
