Prologue: Praeterita

—❆-❆-❆—

A soft veil of snow floated down from an endless sky. It was just after dawn, and a vivid orange and pink glow threatened to break through the clouds, bringing with it the rare warmth of sunlight to the far-northern hinterlands of Arvangrad.

In the shadow of some of the largest mountains in the realm, this was welcome relief for the tribes and villages that lived off the land. It wasn’t yet the season for winter’s fiercest bite, which meant that there was no better time for work… or play.

“Yui, wait up!” A young boy, gasping for breath, managed to call out after her. “You heard what mom said, we’ve got to pick the ‘tatoes before the beetles get to them.”

“It’s fine, brother.” A girl, slightly younger, replied flippantly before putting on a cheeky grin. “The beetles can wait, can’t they?”

“W-well, that’s—“

“—that’s all talk in the wind!” The girl, Yui, hopped up on a tree stump, a hand on her hip. She pointed her index finger at her older brother. “I’m in the mind of a game we can play, you wanna hear??”

Through her proclamation, someone could easily tell who the more assertive one of the two was. The boy sighed, crossing his arms. He knew as well as anyone that arguing with her when her mind was made up would only draw things out, and he couldn’t well pretend that an opportunity like this—with the usual weather—would come often.

“Alright, Yui.” He nodded in resignation with a faint smile. “What’ve you got in mind?”

—❆-❆-❆—

“At the edge of the forest, there’s this neat little clearing where I saw something amazing one time! Something blue, with wings, it was like… an angel!”

“An angel? Really?”

“With luck, we’ll be able to catch a glimpse of it again. Maybe we can even be friends, but we’ve gotta catch it first.”

“I don’t know…”

The two had been walking for close to an hour when they reached the treeline that led into the woods. The forest itself wasn’t overly dangerous on its own, would-be predators having been picked dry by the village’s hunters to keep them fed during the cold season. One such hunter noticed their proud march and called out to them.

“What are you kids up to so early in the morning?” His jovial eyes betrayed his well-toned physique as he held a large axe beside a pile of freshly chopped wood.

The siblings, too, were hardy from the place they lived, but they were downright scrawny in comparison.

“Off to catch us an angel, Mister Tharn!” Yui saved her brother the embarrassment of having to explain, despite the man looking at him when the question was asked. “We want to make it our friend, and maybe play some tag in the clearing.”

“Friends with an angel? Why, that’s the most…” The hunter paused long enough to see the two children’s innocent expressions, still filled with a sense of discovery his features had long since lacked. He chuckled lightly. “Why, that’s a great idea!”

“Isn’t it??” Yui beamed.

“Just don’t go worrying your ma and pa now, they’ve only two younglings to help with the yield, and it would kill your ma inside to part with either of you.” The man cautioned, still resting his axe on his shoulder. “Ain’t much that can eat yous, but every tree looks like the last one when you’re lost in the tundra.”

“That’s what my brother is for!” Yui elbowed the aforementioned boy in the rib, earning an annoyed glance.

“I’m training… to be a hunter.” The boy meekly explained after collecting his thoughts. “I’ve followed pa to the gorge and back while he was tracking an elkhast bull, and I memorized the route back.”

An elkhast was a bulky, deer-like creature that served as the village’s main source of meat. Foraging for nuts and berries wasn’t outside the boy’s skillset either, but he was trained on hunting much larger game.

“The clearing Yui mentioned isn’t too far… I think.”

He nodded as if to convince himself of his own words, but then flashed a more serious look to the older hunter—one befitting an older brother.

“I will protect her.”

“See that you do, son.” The man nodded in acknowledgment of the boy’s resolve. “Not that I have any doubts, mind you. As far as siblings go, you two are thick as thieves. Now mine, they all ran off to Stardust, or some such, and left my wife and me to take care of the farm by our lonesome.”

“Sorry to hear that…” Yui’s expression fell slightly, her brother nodding in agreement.

“Anyway, the point is…” Not wanting to bring down their mood any further, the man quickly pivoted to finishing up his lecture. “Family is the most important thing we’ve got in this world. It’s all we’ve got, really. My wife, my daughter, having something to protect is what connects us all. Never forget that.”

Having said his piece, the hunter waved the two off as they skipped carefree into the trees, never once looking away from their backs, and thinking about paying a visit to their father later to catch up.

Never forget…

The bark of the trees was bleached white like the snow that crunched underfoot, carrying the two siblings through them like a riverboat through tall reeds. The trunks were about as thick, but stretched high into the sky. Making up for their thin trunks in sheer number, the trees knitted together overhead, casting much of the forest floor in shadow.

Their food and water situation wasn’t the best; should they find themselves lost, just a handful of elkhast jerky and a rusty canteen being all that stood between them and starvation. However, the eldest sibling’s navigation skills measured up to expectations.

“Gonna find an angel, said we’re gonna find an angel~” Yui repeated in a singsong voice, swinging her arms to the tune.

She was a few steps ahead of her brother when they heard a twig snap somewhere off to their left. By the time they turned their attention toward the sound, whatever had been lurking by skurried away.

It wasn’t a large sound, but in the silence of the woods, it seemed loud enough to make both children freeze. Rather than linger around, however, they kept walking.

“So, I’ve been thinking…”

“That’s dangerous, brother,” Yui smirked. “About what?”

“What if what you saw, if you saw something…” He took notice of Yui’s pouting face and tried to rephrase it, clearing his throat. “What if it wasn’t an angel, but something… I don’t know, dangerous?”

“Well…” She hadn’t given it much thought. “I’ve got my ice magic, you know. What’s there to worry about?”

She wasn’t much of a spellcaster by the standards of Stardust, but in a village where nobody else could use magic at all, Yui considered herself something of an expert.

“There’s plenty to worry about. Like wolfbears, to start. And then there’s blizzards, rockslides, and drought. Oh, and you can’t forget—“

“—I get it, I get it.” Yui groaned. “If you ask me, you worry too much. But it’s not just my magic. I’ve got you too, big brother!”

She smiled sweetly, enough to make her brother think she was just trying to butter him up. Though her boundless optimism melted away the worry from his face, and he couldn’t argue with her there. They did have each other.

He didn’t mind shouldering the bulk of the concern. If anything, he preferred his sister not to have to stress over grown-up things. Reminded of her magic, though, something flashed across the boy’s expression.

“You know, Yui, about your powers. Mom was telling me…”

“Wait, that’s it! It’s the clearing!” Yui suddenly said, pointing forward. Her head flipped back with a smile, sending strands of her icy blue hair across her face. “We’ve made it!”

Yui sped forward as if she were shot out of a ballista, hardly giving her brother a chance to finish his sentence—or tell her to slow down. The snow had stopped falling for the moment, and the air was still as they approached.

“Whoa…” Yui’s brother couldn’t help but be captured by what he saw. “It’s beautiful.”

The clearing came into view, surrounded by a bowl of trees. Without the canopy to muffle the sunlight, the snow on the ground had melted, revealing an expansive grassy field of snow daisies of all colors. The contrast against the white mountainous backdrop was beyond their wildest imagination.

Beautiful as it was, the boy noticed for the first time just how quiet their surroundings had grown to be, aside from the two of them. Not even the cry of the morning birds accompanied them, and for a moment, he wondered where they’d all gone. Yui, meanwhile, ran around, possessed of whimsy and childlike energy. She made a beeline for her brother, tapping him on the shoulder.

“You’re it!”

All hesitation faded at the point of challenge as a smile spread like wildfire across her brother’s face.

“Not for long, I’m not!”

The two sprinted through the flowers until they were breathless, exchanging tags like they were unwanted gifts. When they had run all they could, they collapsed together on a grassy patch, the tops of their silvery-blue heads resting side by side.

“I won, by the way.” Between heavy breaths, Yui managed to tout her victory.

“How so? You spent much longer chasing me.” The boy couldn’t let that go without a challenge. “Besides, there’s no winners in tag. It’s meant to loop forever, or until you’re too tired to continue.”

“Loop forever, huh?” Yui gently closed her eyes, grinning. “Wouldn’t that be nice if we could live this day again and again. We wouldn’t have to worry about ‘tatoes, or the beetles…”

“You just don’t want to do any chores.” The boy let out a scoff. “But, yeah… it’d be nice if we could have more days like this.”

With that, the boy was the first to stand up and dust himself off any loose pieces of grass or insects, hoping to hitch a ride back home. He extended his hand toward Yui, which she knew meant that it was time to go home without him having to elaborate further. She accepted, hoisting herself to her feet.

A breeze blew, and Yui shivered a bit, wrapping her arms around her woolen tunic. It was sleeveless, and although she was used to the chill, it wasn’t a moment before a long red scarf was coiled around her neck—the one her brother was previously wearing.

“Shall we go?”

“Mhm.”

She smiled as they started heading back, naturally reclaiming her position a few steps ahead of her brother.

“It’s just a shame we never found your—“ The boy’s words were cut short by Yui suddenly stopping in her tracks.

“Angel…” Yui muttered, mouth wide.

Across the clearing, leaning down for a drink from a small pond was a creature of brilliant blue. Sunlight danced across its scales whenever it moved, scattering fragments of blue light across the water. Its body was faintly humanoid, but it was on all fours with fragile-looking dragon wings fluttering with each gust of the wind.

Like a moth drawn to flame, Yui’s small legs began walking mindlessly toward what she believed was a heavenly creature. Her star-shaped pupils sparkled with wonder as she trudged forward in silence.

“Yui, don’t!” Her brother whispered sharply, grabbing onto her wrist. “We don’t know what it is. In my whole life, I’ve never seen a… thing like that.”

“I told you, big brother, it’s not a thing.” Yui clarified, matching his volume, but with far more excitement. “It’s an angel, a real-life angel! Can’t you see the wings?”

“Oh, I can see them…” A bead of sweat rolled down the boy’s brow. “I also see the sharp claws, and I’d bet a matching set of teeth.”

Yui managed to shake free of her brother’s grasp and got closer to the pond. When the boy finally took his eyes off Yui and turned his attention to the creature, he found it staring right at them in a slightly defensive posture. It froze, as though equally surprised to find itself no longer alone.

Another step forward, and the creature recoiled a bit, flashing its colorful wings as a warning signal. The sight was enough to quicken the boy’s pulse. He could sense their presence was no longer a welcome one.

Yui wasn’t entirely unfamiliar with the body language of animals either, and she’d have stopped too if she had seen the stone in her path.

“—!” She tripped forward, spooking the creature into firing off a bit of flame from its mouth in a backward scramble.

“Yui!”

Yui’s brother just barely grabbed the hem of her tunic, pulling her out of the line of fire. They fell on their backsides with a painful thud. Grass sizzled and blackened where they previously stood, but the strange creature was nowhere in sight.

It had fled.

For several moments, neither of them moved, eyes wide with surprise and adrenaline coursing through their veins.

Then Yui snorted.

Her brother tried—and failed—not to laugh.

Within seconds, both of them were laughing so hard their sides hurt, stopping only to exchange glances. Maybe it was only because the danger had passed, but a sense of relief and triumph washed over the two siblings. As though they had fought back the advance of hundreds, with just the two of them.

“I’ve never heard of an angel breathing fire before, sister…”

“You… might be right,” Yui admitted, feeling her heartbeat finally slowing down. “I think it was more scared of us than we were of it though...”

“You think so? I don’t know, I was pretty scared... I think I might’ve peed a little.”

“My dashing hero~.”

Yui’s brother couldn’t lie to look tough, glad that neither of them had become the creature’s barbecue.

“In any case, let’s hurry on and get home, or we’ll have to face two fire-breathing dragons today, except one wears an apron and wields a rolling pin.”

“I’m telling mom you said that.”

“Please don’t…”

Yui looked back one final time toward the pond, half expecting the “angel” to return. The clearing was empty, though, with only a few charred patches of grass to prove it had ever been there at all. She wondered whether to tell her folks when they got home, but ultimately decided against it.

Nobody’s ever going to believe this anyway.

—❆-❆-❆—

As it always did, the snow had begun to fall over the forest once again, and the birds returned to their mid-afternoon song as further proof that the tense moment from earlier had come and gone with the morning’s warmth.

Yui and her brother reached the treeline again, the younger of the two polishing off the last bit of water they had in their canteen. Roughly half a pile of firewood remained where the hunter, Tharn, had stood before. He had since left to take the haul back, or so they presumed.

“…so you’re saying it’s impossible for an angel to breathe fire then?” Handing her brother the canteen with a wipe of her mouth with her sleeve, Yui continued their idle conversation. “How can you say that when you haven’t met one yet?”

“Well, I’m not saying it’s impossible. Of course, I don’t actually know.” He explained. “But every book I’ve read about holy entities points to the contrary. It’s much more likely that—that…”

The older sibling sniffed the air, stopping midstep.

“Big brother??” Yui tilted her head slightly, but then crinkled her nose as well after a few moments.

A cold westerly wind blew, kicking up a flurry of powder, and bringing with it the scent of something that didn’t belong—and from the direction of home. The two said it at the same time:

“Smoke.”

Building a fire big enough to smell on the far side of the valley would require using a wasteful amount of dry wood, a valuable resource even in proximity to the forest, and prior approval by the village elders, reserved only for cooking large game.

“That’s strange, the hunters should still be out looking for their catches…”

“Could be from one of the other villages, no?”

“Maybe…”

With incomplete information, the two couldn’t be sure something was wrong yet, but they simultaneously picked up their pace without further conversation, covering around two-thirds of the remaining distance home.

However, that’s when they saw it, reaching the end of the valley. Like a tower of darkness, the smoke pillar rose in the air above them. They were close enough now that there was little doubt as to where it might be coming from.

“The village!”

The distance that had taken nearly an hour to cross vanished beneath their feet. Their legs ached as they broke into a dead sprint toward their home and their family. It wasn’t long until they heard the terrified screams, from adults and children alike, they rang out like a chorus.

“Get away! The village has been overrun, the Aria, they came, and…”

A fleeing man and his family issued the two a desperate warning as they came running into the firestorm, though he did not stop them, his voice faltering. To do so would be to forfeit their own escape, and Yui and her brother were not yet aware of the situation—or the danger. Yui repeated the unfamiliar words in her mind.

The… Aria?

“What in the hells…” The boy’s mouth hung open as he saw the huts, the fields, the silo, everything that signified their humble lives up in flames. His quiet voice cracked. “…is going on??”

“We have to find mom and dad!” Yui finally insisted, holding out her hand, but not immediately getting a response back. “Please, - - - -, we have to hurry!”

Hearing his own name snapped the boy out of his trance, returning a focused look to his face and the determination of an older brother to his heart. He nodded, holding on to his sister’s hand as they ran toward their housing block.

The smoke clouded their vision, but Yui held her free arm in front of her, producing a glowing blue light. An icy wind blew from her outstretched hand, a small product of her magic. A guttural scream stopped them cold before they could make too much ground.

In the smoke, they saw the silhouette of a huge dragonoid creature’s outstretched wings as it reduced a woman to red mist with its long claws. The thing let out a roar of its own, standing on its hind legs. Taller than two wolfbears, something about the shape of the thing was disturbingly familiar to the siblings, however.

“No, it couldn’t be…”

It skulked closer to the two, confirming their fears as it crossed into their visible range.

“An… angel? No…” Yui’s lip quivered with a realization. “The Aria.”

It was the same kind of creature that they encountered in the clearing, of which they could be certain, but this one dwarfed the other by scores. Its glowing blue scales and spines shone in the darkness like a beacon, spelling their impending deaths like the woman before them.

Fear became defiance as a barrage of ice shards shot from Yui’s hand, squelching into the beast’s thick hide. The effect was negligible, however, and her nose started to bleed. She made no attempt to wipe it away, as the act would prove equally futile given the circumstances.

“Yui?!” Her brother showed concern where she did not, sensing her limit quickly approaching. Yet she continued her barrage, a last-ditch response in the face of no alternatives.

The monster, meanwhile, stepped ever closer, smoke drifting out of its gaping maw. The siblings shook with fear, the brother reaching for the pocket knife on his belt. A haphazard plan telling Yui to flee and find their parents while he stalled there flashed through his mind, but then something whizzed past them at the critical moment.

The monster roared, though it wasn’t in a show of dominance. Pain. It cried out as a woodcutter’s axe pierced its orbital bone, taking an eye out with it. Purple blood gushed forth, staining the snow in front of them.

“Get out of here, you two!” A familiar face at last, Tharn came rushing to their aid, bloodied and beaten. He was alone, though they dared not ask him why. Coming to stand in front of them, he readied a second axe.

“Mister Tharn…” The boy gazed upon the older hunter in awe, but little time did they have to exchange pleasantries.

“GO, NOW!”

The siblings knew what it meant; someone had to be the distraction, someone had to make the sacrifice. Yui gave the man a nod of thanks, and they returned to the smoke—ignorant of their rescuer’s fate.

Snow turned to sleet, and smoke to steam. Through coughing fits and close calls, Yui and her brother approached their childhood home, or what was left of it. The wooden supports were ashy grey, petrified as if frozen in time.

A quick look within is all it took to confirm: two figures, a light extinguished, a home forever lost.

Tears streamed down the boy's face as he clenched his fists at his sides. Whether it was the smoke or the terrible realization that it was now his responsibility to keep Yui safe, he couldn’t say. His glossy eyes panned over to console his sister, but what he saw only cut him deeper.

Yui didn’t have a single tear on her dirt-stained cheeks. She remained in suspended disbelief, an eerie smile plastered over her features like a coat of white paint over a vandalized wall. Her eyes wavered, and she fell to her knees, digging her nails into the snow and soil underneath.

Behind the smile lies a cry…

But beneath the girl’s shattered heart, something far more dangerous had begun to take shape.

Hatred.

The kind that survives long after the flames go out.