Hello, everyone! Welcome to Fall to Fly. This is my first work in a very, very long time, and it is my first time writing for this fandom, so I apologise if some characters seem off.

Also, updates will be very slow. I am posting the prologue and Chapter One now, but the next chapter will come... maybe next year. The reason for this is that one, I am a slow writer; and two, I want to finish the story, or at least most of the story, before I really start updating regularly. I'm posting these chapters now because I felt like I owe it to some of the friends I've made over this site. They've been waiting for a long time.

This story is set in an alternate universe. I hope you enjoy it!


Prologue

Once upon a time, in a faraway land, there lived a cruel king who ruled a cruel people. Dominated and controlled by the wicked, sin ran rampant in the kingdom, their greedy exploitations and meaningless massacres bringing not just their rivaling civilizations to the edge of despair, but also their own people. This was a kingdom built on the blood of men and the tears of widows and the bones of orphans.

But this made them no less powerful.

Barbarians, their neighbours whispered. Murderers and thieves.

But there was nothing they could do about this menace at their doorsteps for the kingdom with its cruel king was too strong. They were feared by their enemies, feared by their neighbours, feared by themselves. Though much of the people lived in poverty and on the brink of death, no one dared to rise up against this evil. And so the cruel king grew richer and richer everyday as his kingdom of darkness thrived and suffered.

Worried for their safety, a neighbouring kingdom hired a young yet powerful warlock from a faraway land. Having spent much of his time travelling, the young warlock had heard many rumours of the dark kingdom, tales of its wickedness passing from lip to ear in hushed whispers and fearful murmurs. Curious as to whether these rumours were true, the young warlock agreed to travel to aid the neighbouring kingdoms, less out of the goodness of his heart than of his curiosity.

When he arrived in that place, where the land was broken up between many monarchs, one of which was the wicked king of the dark kingdom, he discovered a strange society hovering between ruin and prosperity. The constant threat of war had ravaged a kingdom filled with natural riches and trade, and though the the land that the young warlock had arrived in was not weak, it was weary of fear and wished for security.

But what could one warlock do against an entire kingdom? No one knew.

Daunting though the task may seem, the young warlock was unperturbed, whether it was out of youthful foolishness or prideful confidence. He believed that when the time came, what needed to be done would be done, and for now, all they needed to do was wait.

And wait they did.

Waiting was easy for a warlock, who would live forever unless killed.

It was different for the humans, who aged and died as the years wore on. Darkness continued to brew, evil continued to surged towards their doorstep, and yet they waited.

Most did not know what they were waiting for, but the king, and the king after him, and the warlock, knew.

They were waiting for war.


War finally came nearly a century later, at the peak of a dry, irritable summer, when the heat drove animals to madness and men to blood. War swarmed from the dark kingdom to its neighbours like flies disturbed from a rotting corpse. The war erupted violently, and yet a few hundred years from that moment, nobody would remember the war, nor the kingdom, and if they did, it was a fairy tale.

The reason was simple.

The warlock—who had spent the past century marking the borders of the dark kingdom—easily packed the kingdom together before the first soldiers could cross the lines that he had carefully drawn, and banished the entire land into everlasting night.

The earth closed itself over the void that the warlock had created, and thus the dark kingdom was no more.

But somewhere in its banished realm, the trapped people of the kingdom of darkness continued to war: not for power, nor for wealth, but for the sun and a way out of their curse.

Or thus, the story goes.

And the world continued to turn through the centuries, unchanged. The sun laboured daily, but never touched the kingdom of darkness. The mysterious young warlock moved onto his next adventure, and the Queen of the underworld continued to slumber in her silver cage in the sky.

Until the day the moon shattered.