One Soul

Prologue: The Girl Who Cried

On a small, secluded island surrounded by nothing but sea was the town of Pandora. On the surface, it seemed like a regular rural village with children laughing and playing on dirt roads, small houses lit by candlelight, and an aging wishing well on the edge of a precarious cliff. However, the idyll looking town harbored some very dark secrets.

One of which was a little girl, an adopted daughter of a lovely couple on the High Council. Unfortunately, or maybe not, no one knew exactly where she came from or who her biological parents were despite the town being fairly small and the community extremely close. She didn't even resemble any of the villagers, with luminous gold eyes and hair dark as night. But it wasn't this that made her an outcast - appearance mattered little on Pandora, your reputation, potential, everything was decided on one crucial factor; your soul.

People with bright, strong souls were more successful, more charming, more beautiful, more talented...just more. Whereas weaker souls were less rich, less beautiful, less intelligent. Maybe they were, maybe they weren't, but when an entire island believes it, it becomes the truth.

Now why does this matter? The mysterious little girl, Fallyn Grace, lacked a soul. On her first birthday, exactly one year from the day she was found, Fallyn received a soul reading by the priests like every other child on their first birthday. She was loved and cherished by her adoptive parents, Miriam and Samuel Grace. Dressed in silk and ribbons and lace, she was handed to the priests. The parents knew that soul quality was both genetic and acquired, and they knew she wasn't their biological daughter, so they had surrounded her with light and love for the entirety of her live with them in a hope to counteract her genetics. Still, despite it all, the Graces were wholly prepared to love Fallyn no matter how great she was. Why? Because their souls were some of the most luminous in all of Pandora, and it was simply impossible for them to be anything by their namesake; full of grace.

But instead of the holy ink on her forehead glowing when presented to the shining skies, nothing. The ink remained a pitch black mark on her forehead without even a haze of brightness. Storm clouds rolled in great bouts, swirling and crackling with lightning and thunder. Rain came down in fat, heavy drops, striking her white lacy dress and causing the ink to run down her face. She began to cry, and the priests shrieked in the face of a never before seen sight.

"Fallyn!" Her mother didn't rush forwards when her baby was left crying on the altar, but stayed back. Cowardice was not in her nature, but when the wails grew louder and the storm growled something terrible, she could only hold her husband close and watch.

From that day, the news of a cursed, soulless child spread across the island faster than the storm. People talked and whispered and stared at the lovely Grace couple and their horrible, horrible child. At first they only watched from a distance with distaste, but on Fallyn's fifth birthday the people started talking directly to the Graces. Children started teasing and pushing her, covering her face in black mud as an impish poke to her soul reading. When she came home with tears in her eyes, dirt on her face, and tears in her dress her parents took her out of school and stopped buying her pretty things.

Graceful or no, how unlucky they were to adopt such a wretched child! So Fallyn only watched from the small window of her small room trying to imagine how big outside could be. She became sickly and small, and for the next eight years of her life she would stay the same way. Learning to talk and write from the documents her parents oversaw and the meetings held in their home she spoke in a more sophisticated matter than most, but was written off as spoiled and arrogant instead of intelligent. She had no friends or allies in the outside, and after a while her birthday became forgotten, uncelebrated, until she turned thirteen.