The Wilting Ballad

Prologue

Completed

Fades of stars and misshaped moon hid their many faces behind fogs of thoughtless clouds. The flowers from the breezy month of Vejeldez fall from their petals to the ground where later it was consumed by pools of blood which gets imbibed by dry earth that have not seen days of rain, forming small bubbles of pale red.

Smokes rises to the sky, ashes blew upwards like an inversed rain.

It was quiet, as a crypt-like cemetery on enshrining day but for the sounds of fallen leaves trailing on the ground which caught up always to the sizzling of smoldering black fire which lights them and turns them yet to ash once more.

Grandiose structural house of worship alighted the old undisturbed village called Jeroszlim. Most peaceful village filled with the most pacifist folks on all corners of the world, old wise ones have called them. But for the right purpose, even those with undying pacifism is worthy of death. Death, not painful ones.

Weight of the lifeless weighs down the aflame wooden floorboards. It came crashing down creating specks of light that went up until no mortal eyes can see. The smell of burning hair breezes through the hills overlooking Jeroszlim like a steam of cooked venison stew.

On the hills sojourned four figures atop horses not of mundane ones, contrary to the vile and abhorrent image displayed before their eyes, an off sense of pride held a high their minds for what was now a task shy of being accomplished.

They fan out in search of an eye-sized clear green jewel stone of much importance called Hal'odmrtyu. The rider who rides the nail-crowned pale horse with sunken violet eyes galloped over the threshold of a tower beside the fire-consumed church.

The other riders placed themselves nearby, waiting. The moon and the clouds parted ways as the pale horse jumped out with its rider, clutching a box the size of an infant's chest, made of glass-wood and iron that have glyphs and chiseled words onto it.

Having no lock and needing no key Kaionira opens the box, her unfazed expression remains. Inside the box was Hal'odmrtyu and not, it was Hal'odmrtyu but broken into five pieces, with one to complete it elsewhere, unknown. Its short-lived light protruding for half a breath shines Kaionira's pale face, reflecting its light on her equally pale eyes before it dies.