storm - a sky cotl au

prologue - vale

Sky is always peaceful these days.
Some people assume it's always been.

It hasn't.

Back when I was still a teenager, I lived with my sister and a travelling clan on Mount Eden. That was before the Storm.
It was beautiful, with unparalleled views of the sky and the softest green grass. Unowned by any of the kingdoms, it was a perfect place for nomads to settle. I made the mistake of assuming that it would always be as peaceful as it was back then.

The Hidden Forest isn't known for being small, but it seemed to be too small for the Forest Elder, because they set their eyes on Mount Eden. They wanted its land for themselves.
The Wasteland Elder tried to stop them. That was before the Golden Wasteland was a barren land. It was the strongest of all the kingdoms, with an army that knew no bounds.
The armies fought for days and nights, all at the foot of Mount Eden. We tried to stay as high up as we could, hoping desperately that we wouldn't be caught in the crossfire. I was scared, but inside I believed that the Wasteland army would win.

But no one expected what the Forest Elder would do. They crafted a crystal, teeming with dark energy. It glowed red, the colour of blood. They placed it at the peak of Mount Eden.
The sky cracked open.
It was like a portal — dragons with gleaming red eyes flew in and started wreaking havoc, huge rocks pelted towards the ground and the water became corrupted with darkness. Waves of energy flew out of the crack, freezing anyone they touched into stone.

I felt a dagger of fear stab deep into my heart, and my breathing become hoarse, as the sky turned deep red, and the sun turned into a crescent moon. As the grass beneath my feet turned into stone. As Mount Eden was suddenly transformed into a hellscape.

My sister and I tried to escape, tried to run, tried to get as far as we could from the peak of the mountain.

But Mount Eden is huge, and we couldn't make it in time.
One of the waves came too close.
"No—"
The wave hit my sister.
She froze into a statue instantly.

I stood there, frozen in shock for a moment, like I had become a statue too. My sister was everything to me. I couldn't imagine life without her. For a moment, my heart told me to join her.

But then I snapped out of it.

I felt tears roll down my cheeks, but I kept running.
I knew I had to get away. Even if it meant leaving everything I had ever known behind. Even if it meant having to start anew.

I was one of the lucky survivors that day. But no one else from my clan survived.

63 people died that day. 63 statues stood there before the crystal, in the everlasting storm. One of those statues was my sister.

I became an apprentice at the Cave of Prophecy, in the Isle of Dawn. I gathered whatever I could salvage from my old life and started to build a new one, even though I knew nothing would ever be the same.

In the following days, the Golden Wasteland was invaded by the darkness, and evacuated, leaving its landscape to rot and become a barren desert, with no signs of life other than the dragons and crabs. Its former glory was soon lost to the sands of time.

The Hidden Forest, on the other hand, was cursed by the darkness to be constantly covered by light-sapping rain, deadly to anyone who lived there. Most of its residents moved to the rare patches of sun-dappled woods that were left in the forest, leaving the rainy areas to be covered in fungi that leeched upon the darkness of the rain.

Most people tried to forget what had happened, or pretend that it had never happened entirely, but I knew I could never forget. It was seared into my memory.

Because every time I looked up at Mount Eden, or Eye of Eden as it's called now, I would see the Storm.

And I would remember what happened that day.