Prologue ~Serenity~

337 Years Ago

Opsona Village: Fisargo Clan

Tentusa Valley

Screams echoed through the misty hills that littered the western ridge. Screams of mothers watching their children's last breaths. Screams of fathers unable to protect their homes. Screams pleading to the gods to stop the devils raining their destruction down upon them. Anything. Everything was yelled out into the hopeless night to stop the senseless killing. Fires burned rooftops, shadows stalked the hysterical, and people disappeared into the darkness never to be seen again. Their hoarse garbled wails evidence to violence only shadows could witness.

The final echoes of a once proud race were gone in a matter of bloody seconds, and me huddled in the corner of what was once my village. I made witness to the unfathomable power of the Vamdari; evil creatures that not even the gods' wrath could halt that night. Images of blood and death were burned into my twelve-year-old mind, and yet they were shadows. Fuzzy memories reflected against a sandy surface, too fragile to be touched but there all the same.

Shadows of that night haunt my mind. Each time I reach out to grasp them the sand beneath shifts through my fingers and the memories fade, slipping through my mind's iron grasp like taunting black illusions from a distance life. How I wished to remember it all, to reawaken that pain I felt as a young girl. I needed those memories… Those awful feelings. Anything that might cause me to hate. Just a single bubble of some strong emotion for me to break free of his grasp. Something to block out his enchanting voice that echoed in the back of my conscience every second of my immortality, “Say the words, Serenity." My name rolled off his tongue in the depths of my mental walls with a certain seduction that made me shiver with anticipation. "Give into me my child. End your needless suffering, say the words. Free yourself...love me.” His voice repeated over and over, trying to wear me down.

How do you grasp a shadow on sand? How tight must my grip be? I need to know. I need to save myself. I need to break free... I need to save them... I need to save…Him.