A/N: Minna! Look! I'm back with another multi-chapter story! This prologue was originally a one-shot that had potential to become chaptered (called Field of Lights), but then I decided to use it for the prologue of a different story that I was already planning to write! ...And before anyone asks, NO, this is NOT zombie story (it'll make more sense when you get to the end...).

Anywho, enjoy this new story (that will be updated very sporadically until Christmas break... actually probably only once before then... blame college life, people; blame college life...)!

Disclaimer: Ya right...

"We'll hold up a light,
And burn a hole in the night!"
~The Afters: Moments Like This

They were known the world over as the Generation of Hope. Yes, they were primarily known for the destruction they wrecked in the completion of jobs, but no one knew about everything they had done behind the scenes to keep the world safe – not until it was too late, anyway. After their unceremonious demises, word got around, and it didn't take long for them to be known by that name.

Not as the destructive mages of Fairy Tail guild.

Not by their respective team names.

But as the Generation of Hope.

The Generation of Light.

After hearing the stories of heroism, no one ever would have thought that such mages would have met their ends in such ways. For, in the end, only one of them was lost to battle.

Happy was struck down by a demon. His fall was the catalyst for everyone else.

Natsu was so enraged at his partner's death that he used up what little remained of his magic for one grand attack on the demon. It worked, but the Fire Dragon Slayer failed to notice how close to the sea-side cliff he was standing at the time and plummeted head-long into the ocean. Unconscious even before he hit the water, he drowned.

When his body finally washed up on shore, a member of another guild was courteous enough to return the body. On his way to Magnolia, he also found Happy's broken body. Recognizing the insignia, he brought the Exceed back as well.

Several days after the funeral, Erza went to check up on Lucy as no one in the guild had seen her since only to find the blonde mage curled up in the bed in her apartment, dead. No one could find a legitimate cause of death; in the end, they said she simply died of a broken heart.

Erza became a workaholic after Lucy's death. No one had ever seen the S-Class mage work as hard as she had then. After returning from one particularly difficult job in which some members of a rouge band of mages escaped, she was found dead in her room at Fairy Hills, having been stabbed through the heart. The culprits had left a note: "This is what you get for disbanding us!" They said she would have died instantly, wouldn't have felt any pain, but this fact did little to ease the pain in the hearts of the guild members.

With the fall of the last member of his team, Gray turned to alcohol. When Mira refused to serve him in the guild hall, stating that he'd had far too much already and that it wouldn't help anyway, he stormed out to the nearest bar in Magnolia. When every bar in town had kicked him out, he returned home and dug into the stash he kept in his apartment. When a few days passed in which he didn't come into the guild, Juvia volunteered to check in on him, knowing what had happened with Lucy. She would have never dreamed that she would find the Ice Mage slumped over his kitchen table, dead, bottles and cans covering the table and scattered at this feet. The official cause of death was alcohol poisoning.

In her despair, Juvia committed suicide after his funeral.

Team Shadow Gear was taken out in one fell swoop. Heading out on a job, their train ran off the tracks, colliding with another train. There were no survivors.

Gajeel was the next to go. Like Erza, he had committed himself fully to working. He would complete one job, return to the guild, and turn right back around and leave with another job. He – quite literally – worked himself to death. After returning one day, Mira convinced him to at least take a nap before heading out again. He never woke up.

Mirajane could no longer keep up appearances – some would dare to say later that she went completely mentally insane. She contracted a strange illness the likes of which no one knew how to cure any where in the whole of Earthland. She passed away after a matter of days.

Luckily – or maybe unluckily – Lisanna hadn't been home when it happened. She had left on a job the previous day – a job she never even had the opportunity to start. When the client sent word, asking where she was, the guild all but panicked. Two long days later, she finally stumbled into the guild, collapsing to the floor as soon as she had passed the threshold. No one knew how the young mage managed to acquire the injures that killed her.

Elfman was diagnosed with cancer. He died a month after his sisters (six after the initial diagnosis).

Laxus was hunted by enemies he had made as an independent mage. They caught up with him and his team after they had finished a job; the bandits were kind enough, however, to at least send the bodies back in a wagon.

Kana was both the first and last. She was the first of the generation to join – after Laxus of course – so, she supposed, it was fitting that she would also be the last left living. With as much as she usually drank, it wasn't surprising that she left the guild drunk that cold January night. But, this time, there was no Lucy to drag her in out of the cold. She was found in an alley way by her father the following morning.

Within a year, they were gone.

The Generation of Hope had come to an end – far sooner than anyone could have ever guessed.

In the field of lights lay the last of the great heroes and heroines. In the field of lights their souls were laid to rest. And in that field, the lights that mark their resting places will continue to burn bright even though their souls shine no longer.

Yet their stories will continue to burn a hole in the night for generations to come.

For this was not to be the end of their stories, but only yet another beginning…