Chapter 1
High in the Hills of Adaroin, at the edge of a lake beside a narrow mountain pass, a baby is born with glittering skin and hair as light as flame. A woman arrives later that night, at the humble cottage of a man called Baba and his wife, shrouded in tattered linens, bearing a child for them to keep.
She reveals her arms to be layered with bangles of gold and jewels.
They clank and clatter to the dusty dirt as she slips them from her shimmering, golden wrists, and even with her face disguised, Baba, a man who had traveled the roads for more than four decades, recognized her well as one of the great Sages of the great city of Pthoenium, which crested the coastline of the valley at the base of their mountain home.
Baba and his wife looked upon the golden, glittering child, a water-skin bearer, a child of magic, and agreed to take him into their care, raking the jewels from the dirt with their bony fingers. They hid him away in the mountains, far from the scrying eyes of the Elder Sages, for as the child’s mother had told them, the Highest Priestess of Pthoenium had foretold a tipping of the scales of magic was approaching.
In reaction to this news, the Elder Sages had attempted to prop up the scales with their own water-skins, but their weight was immeasurable, and all their magic combined could not compare to its might, for they drew their strength from it, not the other way around.
Despite their best efforts, however, soon in truth, the scales began to tip towards the light, which, in the Highest Priestess’s own words, would soon demand a rebalancing, and in no time, darkness would reveal itself to them, for the last time the scales had tipped, the seven kingdoms of the continent were at war over the Imperial Crown, and for nearly two hundred years, the seven kings and their generals, bathed the lands in blood in its pursuit.
The scales had been tipped so far to the dark, that when they rebalanced towards the light, the first of the Sages were born, and magic, after centuries without, returned to the world and with it, peace. Peace forged by the crushing feet of a new force, stronger and greater than those already at war, and a revelation that a crown, no matter how high, was still dust, molded in fire that drew its power from the same source as magic.
It was then that the Highest Priestess realized, it was the very existence of the Sages that now propelled the scales to tip towards the light, and if that were the case, every child of magic born, was aiding to the tipping of the scales, and decreed to all within her city and in the seven kingdoms, that from that day forward, a Sage Limit was set.
