Prologue
I ambled over a spacious plain of high grass reaching to my waist. The sky above was light blue, there was not a single cloud around. The sun shone in a brightness glaring at me, and although it wasn't cold its beams couldn't warm me. It was silent, too silent. No single bird flew across the sky, no animal made any sound. There was no sound indicating any human civilisation. I was completely alone; time and the world stopped for me. I heard nothing, except the wind roaring around me, letting my shoulder-lenght hair fly, blowing through the grass.
This silence…This total soundlessness…It was frightening.
I felt a small uncomfortable prickle in my neck as if someone was watching me. Hesitant, nearly scared, I looked around.
Nothing but my own shadow was behind me.
When I continued walking I noticed that the grass became shorter and shorter. Or I became taller, I couldn't say it exactly. In the meantime, I was glancing around again and again because of this strange, frightening feeling though I saw nothing but the endless plain of grass and my shadow.
I heard a rustling and turned around slowly. I startled. My shadow freed itself from me and rose beside me corporeal shape. As if that wasn't enough, his eyes glowed red in a black, contourless face, and his claws tried to reach me. I shrugged back and something in me screamed loud with unknown words.
Then I noticed something. Something, that couldn't be real. I asked myself how that was possible. My shadow was in the direction I had come from but the sun never shone in my face at any time. My shadow…wasn't my shadow. After a fast look, I asserted that my real shadow was on my right side.
But what…What was that creature that had lifted out of the grass and towered in front of me like a monument of horror?
These thing approached to me, wide-eyed and with raised arms. I felt like I was paralyzed, unable to move a finger, although I wanted like to flee. Then I felt cold steel in my left hand, tearing me out of lethargy abruptly. I hoicked my arm and saw a blade, twinkling in the sunlight. Then, I swung the blade, and a second before the shining strangely-familiar seeming weapon hit the shadow creature, the world shivered in thousands of shards, like a glass falling to the ground.
"Awake!" a female voice shouted.
And I awoke.