Prologue - The End of an Era
Thunder roared through the lightning-fractured sky, cracking like the blow of a whip.
A woman stumbled out of a servant's entrance, desperate to put distance between herself and the manor. Her shoes sloshed in the flooded grounds, water splashing from her feet up to her waist.
A bolt of terrible lightning screamed across the clouds, throwing light across her distraught face, plastered in soaked hair and spatters of someone else's blood.
The child's body hung limply in her arms, limbs flailing unconscious as she made her escape.
Another booming of thunder, and the woman was past the treeline, branches clawing her body, roots threatening to impair upon her way. Panting, she dodged through the undergrowth, freezing rain penetrating her thin attire and slicing at her skin.
A light. The cottage, finally, appeared in the distance. The light grew, warm and precious, salvation from the torrential downpour.
As she neared the cottage, the woman came to a gasping halt, and from a threadbare pocket, she produced a long, thin stick. Swiping the hair from her eyes, she let the fragile body down to the ground, leaning it against a tree. Holding the stick out in front of her, she whispered one singular word. The tip of her stick began to glow, and a tendril of silver light flowed from the body's battered head.
After a moment, the woman gathered the still-unconscious child in her arms and rushed for the cottage. Pounding on the door, she screamed to be heard over the screeching wind.
A bleary-eyed man stepped outside, taking in the sight before him. A woman soaked with rain and blood, holding a child in much the same condition.
He ushered them inside, and within minutes, an emergency vehicle arrived at the residence, skidding over the water in its efforts to stop.
As the child's body was loaded onto a stretcher, the man got off the phone with a distraught female voice and stepped up to be next to the child. He turned back to thank the blood-soaked woman.
She was gone.