Prologue: A Lost Lily Among Wrong Flowers

[Author's Note: Please read comment!!]

~ “You ready to get going?” ~

I was in the midst of a foggy winter night, snowflakes got as large as the tip of my finger. Walking on a brick paved street illuminated by tree sized lanterns, just barely brighter than what the moonlight had provided. It all felt like a memory, but neither that voice nor this land felt familiar.

She pulled me forth, her brown hair dancing in the mild wind, dragging me through to the end of the street cut off by a black gravel road. Crossing it, a horn shrieked and a blinding light raced ever closer.

This again… Wiping the cold sweat beading on my forehead, my eyes drawn to the hand that girl pulled on in my dream. For reasons I couldn’t tell, there was a longing for it to be held. But those memories faded by the time I packed up my tent.

A gust of hot, humid wind crashed into my face. Spring was ending and summer started to creep in. Wind blown in from the Clairvoyant Sea to the east humidified the Meralic Bay. Rain clouds brewed near the coast, casting down rain every few days, and dew clung onto leaves every dawn.

Following along the coast line, I could feel my shoulder tapping. The sense of a missing person by my side came again, a feeling that had been with me ever since I set off.

Walking along the dirt-paved streets with bits of hay scattered over, I took in the view of Malitic, a small town by the banks of the east-most river in the Detlas delta, on the outskirts of the Kingdom of Detlas. Winter crops were ripe for harvest, and rice planted in the floodplains started to flower. The port busied with merchant ships exporting to the central cities.

Harpies were flying around the fields with loosely sewn hemp bags tied to their legs, spreading seeds and dark mud fertilizer.

Letting my mind be at ease for once, after traveling for so long, and letting the sparks of sound and subconscious wander guide me, I was led to a small circle of people crowding a storyteller leaning against some railings, another retelling of the Prince of Blood and Iron’s acquisition of divinity, the tale of his lover and the day he met his fated one, the—

“Ah, sorry—”

A mering girl’s shoulder bumped into me. She was just a head shorter, silver hair flowed over her fin ears and lake blue eyes then down her robe, shining white with a slight hint of blue.

I held onto my sword by my side and turned, the steel rattled in its scabbard. The cracked armor plate on my shoulder gleamed under the sun, and so did her eyes.

One arm held back, her other reached out to her chest, a golden cling echoed out. A twisting ashen staff in her hand, crowned with a crystal the size of my fist, eight rings hinging off on its side, with the other end capped with gold.

“You’re an adventurer! Could we travel together?”