My name is Noah G. Pennyworth, from Sarasota, Florida.

I've spent my whole life in a world-renowned circus, where, almost unwillingly, I became a witness to the true story of circuses, a story hidden for more than twenty centuries. The world only knows the most superficial part of it.

The informations are fragmented, I'm gathering it together with ancient document and testimonies of my colleagues to translate it into a series of chronicles.

This is the story of the Great Circus War, orchestrated by the world's powers and then spiraling out of control, and of young Eirene, an artist in a small circus, who unwittingly became its centerpiece, along with her companions.

I start with what I remember most clearly, because I was there.

The end.

One of them died.

It's an inevitable end. Death is the most unyielding truth; there's no point hiding it. So that's where I'll begin, because in the circle of life, just as in the circus ring, the beginning and the end aren't separate but instead overlap, essential to each other.

Creating the story of the events that swept us up won't be easy; it will take time to piece it all together, to tell everything we went through. Four books, maybe five. It won't be easy at all to distill and pass on the legacy circuses have left to the world.

Certainly, the best approach is the one used in our world: to teach with contrasts. The circus fuels the courage of its performers with the fear of its audience, the sacrifice of some with the joy of others, effort with satisfaction, rhythm with calm, the grotesque with wonder, risk with safety. The circus reveals truth through illusion, speaks of despair with hope.

It explains death with life.

Or life with death.