Prelude

Heavy and dull iron chains rattled. He felt like the cuffs restraining his arms were mocking him. A cloudless sky came into his sight—blue to an unpleasant extent. He looked at the tower letting out black smoke beneath that sky with his lifeless eyes.

“Hurry up and walk,” a soldier ordered him.

The boy started walking slowly after the soldier pulled on the chain, as if he were a domestic animal. The boy didn’t even know the soldier’s name.

From now on, he probably wouldn’t have any sort of freedom. But even that didn’t matter anymore. All was lost: his home, the people he loved, everything was gone. Would it even matter if I lost my freedom now? he thought. It would just be one more thing he’d lost. He looked back again to see the tower going down in flames. The ruins of his old life came crumbling down with a crash. The sight of that triggered an emotion—a thought—in his hollow heart.

—I will absolutely never forgive whoever betrayed me on this day.

The young sorcerer with amber-colored hair swore vengeance.