Arlena curled up like a newborn with wide, helpless pine-green eyes. Her head rested on her kneecaps.

The window frame carried her weight as she sighed repeatedly while staring out the window, rubbing her dirty sleeves against the foggy surface of the tinted glass to see better, just as the sun peaked and brightened her otherwise dark room.

The children outside the fence were the first thing that grabbed her attention because they formed a circle and held each other’s hands, drowning out everything else in the neighbourhood with their merry tunes.

Their smiles were bright, unlike her own gloomy expression and heavy sighs, although she wished she could smile without worry and be filled with joy as well.

But she wasn’t like the others. She wasn’t a human. Her fate differed from theirs, and her worries were far more serious and unsettling.

Few people lived on the outskirts of the Céinai mountain and everyone knew each other here.

Most didn’t talk to them, she and her mum, Celeste, though. Why? Because they were the descendants of sorcerers. They would be sent to the gallows the moment they made a grave blunder.

She rocked back and forth, terrified and on the edge, as the window frame creaked under her weight.

The sun would rise high in the sky soon, then ascend above the mountains, and her dad would finally return home. Nash, however, was not her real dad. He was of human flesh and not like them.

Her mum married him after the massacre in Jewarta, which left her with no husband or son. Arlena was still breastfeeding back then.

She was unaware of the tragedy the humans inflicted on her family. Not because they did something bad but because of who they were and, of course, chose not to be.

Her big brother, a promising sorcerer, and her dad were returning home from Belzcakir when the humans attacked them in the dead of night. They passed away the day an uprising broke out in the royal castle between the sorcerers and their human apprentices.

This uprising prompted the king at the time to order the persecution of her kin, the sorcerers, and their eternal banishment from Jewarta – the land bestowed upon them by the Queen of Hezakhal.

Her mum was heartbroken when the news reached her, but she survived by marrying one of her suitors. Nash promised to keep her and Arlena safe for the rest of their lives.

But there was another reason Nash never harmed them. The Queen of Hezakhal only gave the men in her kin the gift of sorcery.

Thus, she and her mum were not a threat to Nash, although a sorceress was not unheard of since their creator was, as deduced from her infamous title, female herself. Sorceresses were rare and not widely known, even among her kinfolk.

The gift of sorcery, in that case, passed down from mother to daughter. But Celeste was not a sorceress. It never occurred to Nash that Arlena would one day grow up and possess the gifts of sorcery like her deceased brother and dad.

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Nash was returning home today from his regular hunts on the outskirts of Céinai, looking for sorcerers like her and Celeste on the run. The nightmare, their nightmare, would continue from where it left off.

Because Nash, you see, became another person when he drank and lost his senses. Truthfully, he became no less than the monsters he feared dwelling in Lordôm!

He harboured a grudge against her kin and whenever he hit the bottle, he beat Celeste until she was covered in a pool of blood. No matter how many times Nash promised to never lay a hand on her mum again when sober, he eventually forgot all about his vain promises.

She never quite understood why her mum put up with Nash and forgave him each time he lost his mind.

She and Celeste meant nothing to him. His dog, a cute little thing, was the only one respected in their home. No one could touch or pet it and if Nash suspected they harmed the dog, he would kick Celeste persistently, tirelessly, until she admitted to doing something she had not done.

The dog was, in Nash’s eyes, more valuable than both her and Celeste, even though they lived like drones at his beck and call. But she didn’t hate Enis, and she did pet it when Nash was not around.

No matter what they did, Nash viewed them as nothing more than a burden. They were not good enough – they were not human enough.

Celeste hoped he would change for the better one day. That he would look them in the eyes, for real this time, and beg for forgiveness. But it never happened, it would never happen.

He grew angrier over time, and his hatred towards the sorcerers in the mountains grew as well. He would take both of their lives, eventually – unless they helped themselves get rid of him first.

That fateful day came too soon, sooner than they expected, but there was nothing they could do to stop it.

She glanced to the side and gulped at the sight of the flies competing to eat the dog’s rotten skin. She grimaced and shuddered at the sight, recalling how she found the poor thing in the backyard of their ramshackle hut three days ago.

Enis had bitten the dust and no sorcery in this vast land of Yiraál could revive it.

She had carried it to her room right away, afraid of what would become of it since many vile animals lived nearby and, also, out of fear that Nash would arrive sooner than expected and find it there.

It had eaten something poisonous in the nearby woods, maybe a mushroom of some sort, but her dad would never believe them. He had threatened to kill them far too often, and this time, he would.

But they couldn’t let him hurt them, could they? What kind of blithering idiot would just sit idle and await her demise? They just couldn’t turn a blind eye any longer!

Fear gripped her, but she tried to focus on her breathing and calm herself down.

Nash acted like a proper dad at times, reassuring her over and over again, that he would never hurt them. But he did; he always broke his promises. These vain promises were nothing more than empty words that went up in smoke whenever he drank himself to oblivion.

He was going to kill them, and any regret that washed over him the next morning would be of no use to the dead and rotten.

Besides, Nash was still unaware of her abilities, but he would find out about them, eventually. If anyone could sense sorcery from miles away, it was him. He knew better than anyone about the reek of ashes that followed her kinsmen.

The masters in Mahgrad, or Archmage Malakai in particular, cast upon them this terrible curse so that they wouldn’t use sorcery in plain sight. This was also the reason no commoner was allowed to practise magic or sorcery outside of Belzcakir.

Nash would soon find out, and he wasn’t about to stand by and watch her avenge her dad, brother, and her exiled kinsmen in the mountains.

She vowed vengeance on the men of Gartâr and promised Celeste that she would reclaim what was rightfully theirs from the humans and restore Jewarta to its former glory.

Her fate was already sealed, and her mind brimmed with thoughts no child should ever possess. She was chosen to change the fate of her kinsmen and bring the sorcerers victory once and for all.

This was her destiny, and there was nothing she could do to change it. The Queen of Hezakhal gave her the gifts of sorcery for a reason.