~completed!~ Life is never as easy as you want it to be. Choices have consequences. People change their minds. And the world around you might not be sympathetic towards your beliefs. It seems like either you change the world or be changed by the wor...
Have you ever felt forgotten, in the middle of nowhere?
Have you ever felt like you could disappear?
Like you could fall, and no one would hear.
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~ Lyrics from "You Will Be Found" from "Dear Evan Hansen" ~
~ around five years after the events of 'Prophecy' ~
Shade Shadow hated his name. He hated how redundant it was, and how insignificant the name appeared to anyone outside the Shadow Bay's borders. He hated a lot more than his name, actually, but there wasn't much he could do about any of that. Like his name, the legacy of his ancestors was stuck to him and would never go away.
He'd heard the stories, of course, about how the position he held was one of usurpation. That his uncle hadn't actually ruled over Shadow Bay; that his uncle had simply walked in and claimed the land from his lesser relation. There were tales that the city divided in two long before his uncle came in to claim the title of 'Grand Master Shadow'. Stories that Shadow Bay was a product of something much bigger than the leader of the House. Shade had heard many legends of the great Elemental Houses, and how all of them fell in a terrible war. House Shadow was the only one remaining, and even then, all they had left to their name was this one city, tucked away in the mountains.
Shade spent his days sitting on an obsidian throne of the most uncomfortably cut stone in existence. He miserably had to attend to hundreds of nobles wanting favors, peasants wanting marriages, and guards bringing in prisoners. His days were baskets of paperwork, meetings, and pageantry. He was the Grand Master's heir, after all, he couldn't afford to be anything less than perfection in the public's eyes.
And while Shade was anything but perfect, Thunder's spies did their work well to polish Shade's image.
Shade wasn't sure why he kept waking up day after day to this mundane existence. He was secluded. Friends meant attachment, which meant his judgement might be impaired. If he were ever to marry, it would be to a girl Thunder chose specifically to grant him an heir. Love was not allowed. Thunder himself didn't like to spend time with his nephew. Age had only made Thunder bitter and crabby.
Shade had left Shadow Bay once. It had been the day he realized that he needed to leave that he unlocked his true potential. And surprisingly enough, Thunder let him go. Not that Shade needed Thunder's permission, but it was still nice to have.
"You'll be back," said the Grand Master after giving Shade his permission. Thunder had smiled eerily at his nephew over a pile of nose-high scrolls. "You'll be back when you see the outside world isn't as nice as this one."
