-(Prologue)-

Louise de la Vallière felt as if she was about to suffocate and faint at any moment. Today, all of the students in the second year at the Tristain Academy of Magic would summon their familiar, since it was the first week of spring. The daytime classes had ended long ago before noon, with all of the second year students subsequently gathered in Vestri courtyard to perform the summoning ritual.

"Now, has everybody performed their summoning?" Professor Colbert called out to the crowd of students, running a hand over his shining, bald head. Louise preferred his teachings over the other professors, his knowledge of the arcane arts seemed as if it was infinite at times, although he could be terribly absentminded and strange smells and noises usually came from his quarters, which were separate from the rest of the teacher's living spaces for that reason.

"Nope!" A sultry voice called out from behind Louise, who stumbled forward as the owner of the voice gave her a light shove. She whirled around, coming face-to-chest with the bane of her existence, Kirche von Anhalt Zerbst.

Louse glared up at the darker skinned girl. She had everything Louise didn't: a large group of friends, impressive magical ability, large breasts that drew the eye of every male in the Academy, and most recently, a rare fire salamander as her familiar.

"I believe the zero hasn't summoned anything yet." Kirche taunted, giving Louise a conceding wink.

Louise growled and turned away without responding, and approached the summoning circle. As she approached, she couldn't help but overhear her classmates mutter to each other. Most had simply already figured she just wouldn't summon anything, while others speculated the weird creatures that The Zero could possibly summon.

"Are you ready Miss Vallière?" Colbert asked as Louise strode past him towards the summoning circle.

"I am." Louise nodded, drawing her wand. She took her stance at the circle, and with a long inhale and exhale, Louise was ready. Thus, she closed her eyes, and once she held her arms out with her wand in the right hand, she chanted:

"My familiar somewhere out in the vast universe! O' my divine, beautiful, wise, and all mighty servant, heed my call! I wish from the bottom of my heart! To my guidance, cometh and appear!"

When Louise was done chanting, the only entity to be summoned was ... nothing. She was expecting the students to start laughing at her all over again as usual, berating and amused by her constant charade of failures and mishaps. But that too didn't come to be.

So when she opened her eyes, she was greeted to something more than that...

There was nothing but silence at that point. Everyone was frozen in place, standing in place like lifeless statues. Not a single sound or even the slightest twitch/flinch escaped from anybody.

No one moved at all. Hell, not even the familiars and the surrounding environment moved either. The wind and light had all but came to a sudden halt, thus becoming the last things that stopped along with time.

Looking over at Kirche, and then professor Colbert, there was no sign of life in them. Their eyes never blinked, dilate, or scan anywhere else. But that was nothing to what greeted Louise upon opening her eyes.

Lastly, and most importantly, all the colors around her were shades of black and white. The once vibrant colors of hair, skin, eyes, landscape, structures, and the sky were all void of colors. The only thing that still had colors was Louise herself, whom she had looked down at her hands and clothes to find that she still had her original colors.

She backed up from the summoning circle for a moment, just to see if anyone would watch her, only to confirm that everyone and everything was frozen in place. But that was just it. This was utterly impossible to Louise.

"No..." Louise denied to herself in thought, quietly flabbergasted and speechless to what was happening, "No, this can't be void magic. Even if it isn't, there's no such thing as time manipulation. That's heresy!"

Indeed, it would be considered heresy by the Almighty Founder, Brimir Vee Varutori himself. If it had come to answer the call of heresy, there would be no doubt that he would appear at any moment and reign down on 'Louise the Zero'. Thankfully, or perhaps uneasily so, that never happened.

Suddenly, the summoning circle shrunk into a fist-size sphere before slowly levitating two meters in the air, suspending itself in the air as a glowing blue ball of energy. There was a sense of cold air emanating from the ball, only then did it slowly turn into a clear crystal ball containing a rumbling storm of thunderclouds within. It was here that a beautiful haunting sight was before Louise's eyes.

"Wind magic." Louise slowly dilated in amazement, mesmerized by the white lighting and grey clouds dancing around inside the glass sphere, "Perhaps I am a zero ... no more ..."

But sadly, when she took a few steps to reach out for the ball, it suddenly dropped onto the ground, exploding in a brilliant flash of light that made the pinkette shut her eyes...

(0_0)

When she opened her eyes again, she awoken to find herself lying in ... snow? But it was spring, and most of the snow had already melted. Perhaps that blasted crystal ball of lighting transported her to the remote mountains of Tristain.

Regardless of how she got here, however, there was one thing she could confirm for sure. She could see colors again, and upon sitting up, the view that greeted her was the sight of taiga forest in every direction. Looking around her, she awoken to find herself in sitting next to the embankment of a river, thus giving her a chance to see the sky without any foliage obscuring her view; however, she would soon shiver both out of being cold and fear when she looked up into the sky.

Dusk was beginning to past, and the sun was barely visible beyond the trees anymore. So Louise could only do what she knew best, deciding to follow the river in hopes of finding civilization. Following the currents, which were going towards her right, she hurried her way along the riverbank, trudging upon rocks, snow, and dirt alike against her shoes.

This wasn't a hallucination or dream in anyway, because Louise clearly felt the chilly breeze and cold of the forest all around her. But then again, this couldn't have been happening - the act of teleporting oneself to another location to parts unknown was unthinkable for the most part. But for all what Louise cared as she hopelessly moved along in the forest, she was running out of time to find safety and shelter.

For what seemed like hours, she walked through the largely foreign landscape, eventually coming to a rest and hiding behind some large rocks. Sitting down on her bottom, she was hidden from view from the other side of the river, but she was still very much visible to the forest in front of her. But it mattered naught, since she was tired at last.

As she sat there for a couple minutes, however, there was the faint sight of a distant light through the forest about half a kilometer away, thus drawing Louise's curiosity again. Upon getting back up and walking over to the light, Louise soon saw that there was a village loosely tucked in the rugged taiga. In the village, there was no more than eight houses, a small church and half a dozen plots of farmland.

A classical crossroad allowed visitors and villagers alike to enter or exit out of town in any four directions. To top that all off, there was also a water well in the center of the village, with the bucket hoisted and hanging above the well. Lastly, snow had only fell lightly somewhere throughout the day, thus blanketing some of the rooftops and patches of land with a thin layer of snow.

But when Louise walked into town, there was one thing that made her regret coming to the village. As dusk came to pass and the sun disappeared, there was nobody home. Louise was no lowly peasant or trained explorer, but upon coming into the village and looking around just for a little bit from the crossroads, there was the telltale signs of a raid that took place somewhere earlier.

Louise walked towards the church and saw that the doors had been kicked/smashed open. Worse still, there were five rows of pews inside the church, with some of the pews having been removed from their original locations. There were no audible thoughts to be exchanged when Louise figured out what happened.

Whoever came through this village and kidnapped all of its inhabitants left no trace behind. Hell, not even a single drop of blood was left behind in the church or anywhere in the village. If these raiders - or perhaps slavers - were so thorough, they had to have done extremely extensive and sophisticated planning and coordination beforehand.

This wasn't a simple hit-and-run strategy by some wannabe pillagers or renegades - this was the silent kidnapping of innocence. Even when peering back outside through the doors, there was not even a single sound among the now abandoned settlement except for the crickets beginning chirping and the howling breeze. Furthermore, the fields were anything but fertile anymore, since they were now patches of dirt and snow with frozen water.

The soul of a once lively and simple place was no more, because it had been stripped long ago from its mortal vessel. The only reminders that honored the lost and damned was the empty husks of the houses and buildings in the village. There wasn't much to salvage from the houses either, since they too had been cleared of any belongings, with only some of the houses having any wooden furniture left.

This place was beyond dark both literally and metaphorically. Night had fallen at last, casting a ghastly shadow among the lands, though there was no moon to illuminate the dark for those poor souls down below. This was the aftermath of death, an empty graveyard inhabited by the fallen, the sick, and the forgotten.

If the Founder still had his eyes upon Louise, then there may still be hope and a blessing to give mercy to those poor souls out there. What if this was the Tristanian Magic Academy, or Tristania? Oh by almighty Brimir, such a thought is already morbid and uncomfortably unfathomable.

It was time for Louise to leave at that point, seeing enough of the village to realize that there was no refuge here. But as she was taking her first five steps away from the water well, her right shoe stepped on a piece of glass. Stopping herself in silence, she looked down and took her foot off the broken glass, soon realizing that she was looking at a reflection of herself.

In that shattered reflection, she was no longer in her school uniform, and all the colors from her were completely void except for shades of black and white. Rather, she was wearing a black boilersuit, black shoes, and a garrison cap on her head. Her flesh and hair were as white as nothingness, her eyes were as brown as dark wood, and her hair cut short in a manner as if she was a man.

She was completely expressionless as she looked upon herself. There was something she felt, however, which sadly came back at her like it was an alien. Specifically, those weren't her own eyes that were staring back at her.

Looking into her own self, there was only one thing that looked back at her: Mortuus Silentium. These were simply the eyes of suppression...