Prologue

The sound of bells rang across the night sky, and the town below beamed with flames and passion. The town rumbled with anger as the sea of people looked up to a podium.

A single man stood tall on top of the podium, his golden hands and smile beaming down towards the crowd.

“My people, please, calm yourselves.”

His words fell on deaf ears as a middle-aged man spoke up.

“Those damn angels up on that sky island lied to us for ten thousand years; we should clip their wings and chain them down here!”

“Yeah!” the people exclaimed unanimously. The crowd erupted as a sea of torches and pitchforks waved up and down.

The man on the podium looked down at the wooden flooring and then to the crowd.

“So my people want a massacre?”

There was a small pause as the ocean of people looked up to the man.

“I, King Midas, will grant you a massacre. I will go up to their skyisland and turn it and the so-called angels to gold to give to my kingdom! This will be the great bleach of the angel race!”

The roar from the crowd nearly destroyed a nearby mountain with its vibration alone.

“All hail King Midas!”

While the people of the ground roared, the people in the sky gathered at the center of the sky island. In the center of the island, a meeting was being held.

There was a muscular young man with jet black hair, and his hair had a white stripe in it. He was wearing a black fur coat.

The man slammed his heavily scarred fist against the long table. “They already killed fifty of our kind, and for what? Because ten thousand years ago, they made the mistake of calling our kind angels? I say we go down there and burn their kind to the ground!”

“Strom general Polo, calm yourself. We still don’t know what is fully happening.” The response came from a young man with bright red hair; he had soft, fair skin, and his wings, sprouting from his back, were a blood red color.

“Don’t know what’s happening?! My king, they are killing our people!”

Another voice cut into the conversation, “General Polo! You speak out of turn.”

The voice was a rough, feminine one; the source was a woman with flaming hair, fair skin, and wearing a suit of armor. Her wings that sprouted from her back were red with an orange flame pattern.

In the society of Angels, the structure was simple: the people, soldiers, and doctors; then the generals of the army; the left and right wings of the king; the royal family; and finally the king, the Queen, or both.

The woman who stood before the storm general was the right wing of the king, Sin, the angel of the sun.

“King Michael will not be addressed in such a manner, do you understand?”

Sin looked down upon the enraged general, but in response, he stood.

“What I understand is that those ungrateful worms dare harm our people, and what I understand is the simple fact that we are stronger, faster, and more skilled in magic than those low life-”

His speech was cut off when King Michael spoke, his head looking up to his people.

“Do you think they don't know that? If Humans are anything, cunning is one of them.”

Polo jumped at the king's response, but the king continued.

“If they are getting this confident, so confident that they killed fifty of my people, then that means they have some kind of trick. Some weapon or technique that gives them an advantage. That is why I am holding back our power, because we don't know what is up their sleeves.”

His voice was deep and calm, so calming that every angel in the room had an uncomfortable chill sprinting down their backs. It had taken a few beats before Polo spoke again.

“I get that, but-”

“Do you think I'm not angry? Because I'm not raising hellfire that I am not furious. That I enjoy seeing my people suffer?”

“Well, no I-”

“Then please try to understand the situation I am in. I refuse to charge my people into battle if we don’t even know if their trump card is a weapon or a technique. Now, please, General Polo, get some rest.”

There was another moment of silence. The general looked to the king, then to Sin. After a huff, he grabbed his drink and then walked out of his room.

The air outside the central building was unusually chill; the temperature alone gave Polo goosebumps. He walked through the town in the sky, counting the stars as he wondered. Time seemed to brush past as Polo moved about the sky island.

“Are you pouting? That’s a look I haven’t seen you wear since our time in the academy.”

The voice seemed to come out of nowhere, but Polo didn’t seem surprised. The stars in the night sky seemed to bend and flow; they began to shift into locks as a woman stood next to him. She had pale skin and galaxy-black eyes. She wore black obsidian armor with wings shaped like dark blue-and-white stars.

“Oh, don’t give me the scilant treatment. The less you talk, the more I will.”

Her arms wrapped around his neck as she hugged the man from behind. She began to poke his cheek.

“I-I just needed some time to myself.”

“Oh, I heard, Sin told me you had a hissy fit.”

“If wanting revenge for your kind is a hissy fit, then yeah, sure, I had a hissy fit.”

“Well, yeah, you did.”

Polo let out a huff and looked away. The woman next to him was Ninda, the left wing of the king. She let out a giggle at Polo’s childish dismissal of her accusation.

“Wow, almost five hundred years old and you’re acting like this? When will you ever grow up?”

“Look, all I’m trying to say is that if we let those ungrateful bastards think they can harm us, they’ll-”

The vibration of an explosion rippled through the sky island. Polo and Ninda both began to spirit towards the source.

A giant red dragon parched upon the north side of the island. In front of the dragon stood a crowd of angels looking towards it. Leading the angels was King Michael. Standing on top of the dragon was King Midas.

“Hello, Angels, I am King Midas! Let’s have a word.”

Standing within the crowd was a female angel; she had brown hair that covered her face, but her golden eyes looked directly towards Midas.

Ten thousand years later, within a wooden cabin gently getting covered by a light snow, a man with fair skin was reading a book, next to him was a woman with similar skin lying down.

“The great bleach was a mass genocide event that was held 10,000 years ago between the Sona kingdom and the Angels of the sky island.”

The man looked at the woman who was asleep, his eyes then wandered to her stomach, rubbing it while setting the book aside.

“My little child…I can’t wait to see you. Your mother is expecting any day now. I called the doctors, and they are on the way. Your mother believes heavily in superstitions, so she had a witch come by and bless the house…I think her name was Baba something.”

The man kissed the stomach of the woman.

“Let’s hope nothing goes wrong, okay, my little child.”

The next week, after giving birth, the mother of the child picked up a knife and tried to stab her baby on multiple occasions within a few minutes. She reasoned that the child had skin the same color as the earth and therefore, was a demon child. In the chaos, the woman managed to throw the baby outside in the snow for it to bleed out.

The name of his baby is Zeke December, who was given the nickname “Winters Red Snow.”

-End of Prologue-