Prologue to my upcoming book "The Raven Rhapsody" (Patreon)

Fire On High

A Prologue

  Long ago, the world had seen the rapture its people had prophesied. Towers were torn asunder; empires ended in an instant, and families fractured from the fire on high. All were equal in the elimination of mankind. Was it by the hand of God that laid waste to the civilizations or maybe the machinations or mistakes of the ancient men and women who once stood in this broken world? Time has forgotten what the origin of the end truly was, for those who inherited the earth in its wake had but one thought in their minds: survival.

  The flames took most in their vicious embrace, leaving those who survived with extraordinarily little. Like ghosts, they wandered the world that was once theirs, forming what little groups they could to persist, to endure the aftermath, to find sanctuary in the ruins of the dead. The sky was now a nebulous gray, be it night or day. To all who lived, it appeared time itself had stopped moving as if it too had perished alongside everyone and everything else in the pillars of flame. There was no sun or moon, only the void. The everlasting taste of the abyss was far too much for far too many to bear, leaving only the most stubborn to survive. Harsh blizzards, storms of cinder, and toxic air life excruciating to continue. This was a time of darkness, generations growing up in the graveyard, yet even still life carried on. They found love in the embraces of others; they fought wars over the artifacts of cultures long over dead, and both man and creature adapted to this unfamiliar landscape of ash. Both man and animal learned to live off of nothing. However, this time didn’t last for long… for then came a being born new from the very ashes of old.

  Manifested from nothing, a man stood before what was left of humanity. He wore a mask of perfect white, the same shade as his long-curled hair and crystalline skin. His name, he told them, was Seth. From Seth came the birth of the blue sky and death of twilight, so it is written. With the wave of his right hand, the thick muck of the sky gave way to a bright new one, blue as it once was. For the first time in hundreds of years, the children of the earth could see the sun, and its name was Seth.

  Seth had powers beyond comprehension. He could build cities with his mind, grow crops with the sound of his voice, and cure illness with the touch of his finger. He was a miracle given to those who never gave up, to the generation that knew only of the cinders of what was. A new world was born from him. What’s more, from his ashen hands came the tools for people to not only prosper… but never fall to waste again. Seth gifted the children of the next generation with the ability to endure through powers, not unlike his own. To some, the gift of skin hard as steel and strength beyond what any human was capable of was given. To others, he gifted them powers of the mind, great horns adorning their head, which came with talents to shape perception, control the wills of others, and rule this modern earth as gods. Finally, to a rare few, he gave abilities over the elements, over nature, and over their very shape. These brave new successors of the earth would spread the influence of Seth, building the almighty empire of Golsetha, the new world order.

  They then consumed much of the ancient’s broken lands in the new flame of creation, those relics of the late world destroyed in pursuing purification, so that the blue sky might shine across the entire world once more. Still, there were those who dared to stand against the new God and his order. There were those who did not wish to be subservient to this man of the dead flame. With his rule came order, a law by which the people should adhere to, and there were those who saw these gifts as a curse given to them without consent… born as weapons to this mysterious man of ash. They rejected his new order, and so it is written that from Seth’s left hand would come a scepter of fire to be driven through all who should deny their perfect God. Anyone who stood against Seth would know what it means to live in twilight once more, and so the wrath of God would come to be known throughout all the lands he touched. All would fall in their rightful place beneath the masked man. Seth was loved, he was respected, but above all else, he was feared… after all, who could stand against such brilliance? To refuse Seth was to reject the new world, and so those that did… would perish in their primitive place… their fate for their folly to be forgotten like their forebears.

  Then, like a ghost in the darkness, Seth would leave this world for all his children to maintain. Little is known about where Seth went. Some say the man finally died after having successfully built his invincible empire, others tell tales of him ascending to the heavens… only to return should he ever be needed again. They would sing songs of the man born from the cinders of mankind’s first end, books written depicting his every word of judgment, and those who ruled now lived by his hand of fate, building a society unlike any the world had known before… for hundreds of years.

  It’s in this world, born of fire, that a child should be born… amidst the snow.

  The smell of death filled the air. Pure white tears fell onto the land, covering the bodies of soldiers freshly slain. The frosty winds knew no allegiance, however, as the bitter cold bites at the beard of a man clad in black. Wet, battered, and over-seasoned was the man who trudged through the deep snow. His long hair danced in the wind; his legs still moving by some miracle through the storm. The man was wounded during the skirmish. Both his blood and that of his enemies caked his dark attire. The cold, however, graced the man with a numbness to all the blows he had endured. All around him were the ruins of the old world, the only place it still snowed. Indeed, it was a rare sight for someone like him, an Ashenborn, accustomed to the ideal weather of the Golsetha Empire’s reach. His great black horns that adorned his head had never felt such a sharp yet natural chill. Behind him, he left what was a village on the outskirts, in ruins. Dead bodies darted the surroundings, homes burnt to the ground, left to be overlooked like so many others outside the walls of the sovereignty of Seth’s soil. Only one treasure in his arms was proof the place ever even existed. A child wrapped in a heavy blanket, born but only moments ago.

  The man braces the newborn close against his chest. The child was an Ashenborn, birthed in the outskirts of the new world, the Arena Lands. It gave the man comfort, hope even, to feel the baby’s heartbeat slowly against his own. Tears welled up in the man’s drained eyes, the weight of everything finally reaching him like stones tossed from miles away. He fell to his knees, holding his cargo tightly, never letting the oh-so-apathetic gales touch the child’s fragile form as his mind rushed with anger. He knew there was no going back from this point onward, that his life would be that of an outlaw. The Golsetha Empire would see him as an adversary, a traitor, a bug to squash like all others who dared to bite the hand of God. He, however, cared little about himself. Those demons could have him. He’d fight any bloody battle they wished until his body was nothing more than a broken sack of meat. The Golsetha Empire… the Seth Soul Sovereignty… the man… no… monster named Abraham Valentine… they could all free him of this hell should they wish… he’d take as many with him as he could. Fuck their God, fuck their government, fuck their culture! He’d rather be dead than a slave. He’d do it all now, burn what he could, die by his own sinful hands… if only… it was not for the precious cargo he now shielded so carefully from the winds of winter.

  Tears rolled down his bruised cheeks. He lifted the child from his chest for but a moment to see the sweet chubby face of the boy named Darius. The two’s stare met, both bearing blue eyes, but one was dull and clouded with the souls of the others he had slain. The other had a brilliant gleam to them, luminescent with the hopes and dreams that came with birth. Perhaps it was the bloody hands of fate that these two should meet here, or arbitrary chance, but both shared with each other, in that moment, a smile… despite the cold. They would, as those before them, persist.

  The man held the child snugly against his breast once more, with two vows leaving his bloodied lips that night. He would protect this baby boy, raise him as his own… and live this cursed life, if only for his sake. Darius would know what it means to be a free child with dreams and wonder. He would be sure the boy was happy even if, in truth, suffering lay ahead. The second vow… was that he would have his revenge… and end the cycle of misery. By his own free will, he would bring an end to the empire that used him as a weapon. The world shall know what they took from him, that they brought it all on themselves, by their own will. He would be the conductor of the chorus of liberation, the harmony of the rejected, a symphony for the slaves, a song for the scorned-

The Rhapsody of the Raven

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Let me know your thoughts down below, I've also included a word/docx version if you prefer to read it that way. This is just a short preview of what's to come, I'll be posting the next few chapters here as well in the coming months!