Prologue
What you are about to read is a recollection of my travels for those who come after me. My travels took me far and has seen many lands unimaginable to most. These reports will challenge what you think you know about this world of ours that so many take for granted and that is filled with so many things that seem like the most normal sight of all. But before I upturn your entire understanding of this world, a little bit about myself.
My name is Havellan, second child of Nikandtos. My father Nikandtos was a carpenter and cabinmaker living on the far outskirts of Northbridge. My mother Damiane was a baker. My older sister Destasia took up the craft of my mother. Despite not being of any noble blood, I was found to have the gift of arcane magic. To learn the theory and practice of magic, I would have to attend university, and the prestigious University of Northbridge was my immediate choice. Only with a military scholarship did I manage to reserve a spot there, which meant that at the age of nineteen, I was drafted into the naval forces of Northbridge, where I served as a deckhand under Colonel Gnaeus Corbula, who quickly saw me as a promising candidate, for as part of the scholarship, I would be trained as a warmage after my graduation.
As my subject I decided to dedicate myself to architecture. Northbridge University was, after all, renowned for its prowess in architecture and whether it be in peace or wartime, it could find ample application to earn an income to support my parents, so that they might finally retire in peace and comfort as they deserved.
All of this would change when my Colonel asked me to do a friend of his a favour.
This is the story of how I climbed higher and higher by descending down to the depths nobody beneath the sun even knew of.
