Epilogue
SPRING—THE SEASON OF BEGINNINGS, OF life, the beginning of beginnings. Every debutante and escort worth their blue blood spent the majority of their childhoods preparing for this most special of days, April 1st. Music filtered through the Upper District on the night of the Spring Ball, a gentle melody emanating from the Rudleberg estate. Inside that estate’s humble, moonlit kitchen sat the culprit, a single pup resting soundly in her lap.
Sweet dreams—Fa in Bel Sogno.
A simple spell for the little pup fighting off sleep. Little did Melody know the true strength of the ancient evil for whom she sang, or her role in the game called The Silver Saint and the Five Oaths.
The Saint subdued the Dark One, and in so doing unleashed her silver essence. Again, unbeknownst to Melody, a torrent of glowing, powerful energy erupted from her, stretching beyond the kitchen, silver fractals like branches of a sacred tree enveloping the royal capital in its boughs. It spread slumber like scattered leaves not just to the Dark One but to every resident who called the city home.
Such power was destined to exceed the bounds of Paltescia’s walls, however.
When Melody concluded her song, the branches shrank, and the silver tree melted away, but so much mana could not simply vanish. Traces lingered, traces that should not have even existed but nonetheless were carried away by the wind to the north and west. The mana traveled slowly yet rapidly, aimlessly yet surely, as if guided by some unseen power.
Three titans sat like gemstones inlaid in the bosom of a vast, Y-shaped mountain range: the Kingdom of Theolas, the Kingdom of Hemnates, and the Rordpier Empire. The peaks bound each nation, protecting their borders; but to the west, on the Hemnates side, slumbered riches, true gemstones.
By order of the Hemnatian crown, those gemstones were mined, and from those riches sprang a town. In that town lived an orphan, if a girl of fourteen, a year from adulthood, could still be considered an orphan.
She dashed between stalls, bread clutched to her chest.
“Stop! Thief! Thief!”
“Maybe if you say please!”
The girl, lithe as she was, bounded up a wall, scrambling onto the building’s roof. The baker stamped his feet. “Get back here, you little…!”
The girl cackled. “Thanks for the bread. Don’t worry. I’ll put it to good use!”
“Damned urchin! I better not see you again!”
She sneered, took a deep breath, and shrieked. “Help! Someone! Gowin’s trying to force himself on me!”
“Good lord, woman! What in the hell are you—” Gowin took a moment to appreciate the number of young women eyeing him up. “Demon girl! You lousy good-for-nothing!”
But the baker’s sharp wit pierced only the air. The girl was gone.
Minutes later, Leah emerged from the shadows into a shady alley on the outskirts of town. She did not know why her name was Leah. She hadn’t had a name before, and it was the first one she thought to give herself. So she was Leah. She thought it suited her. It didn’t mean anything, and she didn’t know why she liked it, but she did indeed like it, strangely enough. It didn’t matter what her name was anyway. No one would know it but her. She’d always been alone, no one to look out for her, no one to take care of her. Most kids met grim fates under those circumstances, so surely she’d had someone at some point, and surely that person called her by a name.
Leah bit into her pilfered bread. The thrill of the chase ebbed away, leaving the previously entrancing loaf of bread mere, drab sustenance. It was all business, in the end. She took no joy in her spoils because, somehow, deep down, she knew stealing was wrong. She only did it because she had to, because she’d starve otherwise. No one would employ a street urchin, and there was no infrastructure in place to support people like her, not even orphanages.
It was a town born of riches, by the rich, for the rich, a cesspit of inequality and privilege.
Leah couldn’t even leave, ensnared in the system as she was. She couldn’t waltz into a new town, unwashed and mangy, and discover some brighter future. No, she had to steal. She had to. And yet she had standards. Morals. She wouldn’t let the machine chew her up. Leah put on her little show as her one meager act of defiance against the society that had forsaken her, a spiteful mask of joy in the face of despair. She had to at least pretend. She had to.
The class disparity in the town was a gruesome thing. The working class—miners, primarily—suffered poor conditions and frequent workplace deaths. The streets overflowed with children whose parents had left for the tunnels one day never to return. Leah figured she was one of them, not that she’d ever know for sure.
“Wish that guy quipped as good as he baked. Needs a wife.”
Leah let herself savor the bread, if only for spite’s sake. She thought about a future where she wasn’t so destitute. Maybe she could have done him a favor. She just as quickly discarded the idea. The baker was too old and too portly for her. She might have been an urchin, but she still had standards.
I prefer more of a tan, she thought. And a cute smile. Whatever those are.
She didn’t have a clue where she got those preferences. She just had them. Maybe one day she’d actually meet someone who met them.
Wonder who I’m holding out for. Maybe he’ll show up in my dreams.
Leah made herself comfortable against the dark, dingy wall at her back and gradually dozed off. She had to rest when and where she could. There was no telling when someone would come looking to take what wasn’t theirs.
“Uh-oh,” she panted. “These guys are serious.”
“Get back here, urchin!”
“You can’t run forever!”
“And you sure as shit can’t hide! Get over here!”