When I woke up, the next morning everything was foggy and hazy in my mind.

My thoughts felt jumbled and fragmented and I couldn't grasp hold of them properly anymore,

I wasn't certain how I was sitting there on a cushion on top of the hay bale, my legs spread wide open, and a long linen robe draped over my shoulders.

I looked around the small, cramped compartment and tried to get a good look at my surroundings.

Everything in the space was spotless.

The floor was a plank of dark wood, and it had clearly seen a lot of use.

As soon as I started looking around, I realized I had no memory of last night after they delivered me.

I tried to look around hoping that any of it could jog my memory but,

It was very dim.

The rest of the room was quite empty, I wasn’t sure how I could have slept the whole night there with nothing to cover me.

I tried to move my limbs slightly,

I wanted to get out from there before anyone discovered me there.

After struggling for a while I succeeded in shifting myself to a sitting position,

My hands trembled violently.

My throat hurt, and I felt extremely tired, I wished I hadn't woken up just yet, but at least I haven't been tied up anymore.

The cloth covering my body was stiff as hell, making it hard for me to breathe.

The strange material was rough against my skin and chaffed my raw flesh, which caused me to grimace and gasp for breath every time that I moved my arms.

The cloth covering my thighs was thin, the fabric was very thin and thin, too thin,

it was nearly transparent, it didn't protect me from anything,

The cloth only revealed the bare skin of my thighs.

I looked around desperately for something that I might use to cover myself with, but there was nothing there.

I looked towards the door of the carriage and felt that they must have locked it from the outside.

"Fuck!" I whispered angrily, As I fumble my way toward the god dammed door once there I began pushing the door

Trying to push the door open, but even with all my effort all I managed to do was force it open a crack.

My chest heaved as I struggled to control my breathing.

I closed my eyes and slowly calmed down and concentrated on keeping my mind clear.

The scene outside was a blur; I couldn't tell where we were headed nor whom we were going toward.

After a few minutes, the rocking motion ceased, and I heard the clatter of horses' hooves and people talking.

Someone opened the door causing me to fall down.

The sun had already risen, its rays shining brightly on my face.

"Good, you seemed to be awake" The Prince himself stood in front of me, lean and long-limbed, the man wore a sleeveless shirt of white silk, dun-colored doeskin breeches, tall boots, and a white fur cloak that covered him fully, and a silver sword strapped to his hip

My gaze shifted to his face for a moment as I got up and hurriedly bowed my head low.

It was hard to see clearly in this sunlight as it seemed to reflect off of his face.

The only thing I could make out was a faint scar on the right corner of his mouth and he wore a lot of adornments: arm rings of beaten gold and a single gold earring set with a diamond that was likely worth more than my entire life.

Suddenly, Hasty footsteps sounded as several servants entered behind the Prince.

They were holding a litter of what looked like cat cubs with what looked like bundles of hay and blankets in their arms.

A pockmarked young man in a blue satin robe and cock feathers drooping over his ridiculous hat walked towards me holding a spear that looked so heavy it could barely hold the weight of its metal tip,

he adorned so many jewels and ornaments so many varieties that he looked like a walking, talking jewelry box,

There were gems in his hair, on the ears, neck, and wrists, on his fingers and toes, he wore necklaces and bracelets that shined like rubies and diamonds, and even gems were stitched into his long hair.

The man reached us and The Prince slapped his arm playfully.

"How did last night go? Any problems?" He asked with a hint of sarcasm in his voice.

"No Prince" The man replied as he lowered his head once again.

"Excellent" The Prince smiled

"take the girl back to the slave pens with you and have her bathed, fed, clothed"

The young man nodded quickly and took his place alongside the others as they brought out the litter and placed the cubs in front of the prince.

Then they started discussing which cub is the best and which to kill.

I felt a slight chill on my naked upper legs when a sharp wind blew through the passage, it was bitterly cold and I knew that it would get colder before nightfall.

I was confused and disoriented as I saw the scene in front of me

'why was I in the carriage?'

'Why were they being nice towards a slave'?

'where were we?

'why couldn't I make out my surroundings?'

my head started to hurt with all the unanswered questions.

I was almost grateful when an older led me away.

“Where are we going?” I asked, my hands shaking uncontrollably

“You'll find out later,” the older man said curtly I didn’t feel comfortable enough to ask why,

I decided against it and remained silent.

The trip lasted an hour and the journey was almost unbearable.

The only thing that kept me sane was the scenery from one end to another there were at least a thousand beautiful carriages ornately designed with various shapes, colors, and designs, there were also hundreds of men carrying torches and banners.

There were also countless horses pulling huge wagons containing loads of food, wine, and other luxuries.

It was weird it was as if I was traveling in some painting I couldn't see the sky or ten feet outside of the road, each time I tried to see something my head began to hurt, as my vision spun.

It took us longer than usual to arrive at our destination because a couple of times we had to stop to allow all the people passing us by.

I also noticed something the further we went the poorer the carriages got, when we finally reached our destination the vehicles were no longer carriages but simple wagons pulled by starving horses.

We stopped outside a make-shift building made entirely of wood.

Inside was a great dining hall lined with rows upon rows of tables.

At each table were men and women dressed like servants, but instead of the plain grey clothes that was inched into my mind, these people wore clothes made of some dark brown colored material with a few hints of wear and tear.

They were all gathered around an enormous wooden table that was set at the far end of the hall.

As we approached, the smell of cooked meat filled the air and wafted towards us making my mouth water with hunger.

We came to a halt at the edge of the line when the old man beckoned one of the servants who was standing to the side,

but instead of that man three of the other men make running towards him,

he grunted and motioned toward me.

“Take this Slave to be marked and bathe, feed, and dress him” He instructed and handed a letter over to one of the servants

With that, the old man turned and left.

As I watched the man leave I felt weird, but before I could make head or tails of the situation a horrendous pain flared from the groin,

as one servant had punched me in the nuts.

I felt so weak and dizzy that my legs started trembling so badly that I fell down I saw, and my whole body shook

as I laid my head down and rested my forehead on my knees.

It was painful so bad that I thought I would pass out from the pain but then my eyes widened as the other two men grabbed my arms and began dragging me somewhere.

My journey across the crowded room, naked in the freezing wind, hobbling frantically through the crowd was almost too much for me to handle, despite that, I fought the urge to cry and collapsed as fast as possible onto the straw-covered ground.

Instead of delivering me straight to the Prince’s slave master, The men took me to some place that looked like a forge from the middle ages and ordered the smith to mark me with the royal seal ... on the face.

What breath I had left was sucked away in horror.

On the day of their capture, all slaves were branded with a crossed circle, but it was always on the shoulder, as I had been, or on the thigh.

Never on the face.

“Is he a runaway, then?” asked the smith.

“Prince Aleksander don’t brand none but runaways in that fashion. Don’t like the ugliness, even in those for the mines.”

“No, I’m only—” I tried to protest, but the man on my left shut off my cry with an iron bar he’d been fondling since we’d entered the smithy.

“See the lash marks on his back, and how we’ve had to chain him up like a wild dog? Of course he’s a runaway.”

“Is He a Remesian? Durgan says—”

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“Are you afraid of groveling filth like this? The only thing that’s going to happen here is you brand him or I turn you into a tongueless gelding for disobedience. Now, do it.” the chinless man to my right shouted fiercely The blow to my head had left me groggy, but I soon wished that he had hit me harder.

Claiming long experience with the Prince’s whims, the uncertain blacksmith used only his smallest iron to sear the seal of the Nerzhi royal house on my left cheekbone.

The larger iron would have exposed bone and teeth, creating enough damage that sepsis would eat away what was left of healthy tissue.

But, at the moment, gratitude was not in my mind.

And so I was deposited on the straw-covered floor of the slave pens, shivering, nauseated, and half out of my head.

The burly slave master, a bearded, flat-faced Manganar who called himself Durgan, looked down at me in puzzlement.

“What’s this? I got word of a new house slave for the Prince’s service, not a runaway fit for nothing but the mines.”

How could I explain this to him ?

!

I couldn't!

Not after everything that happened that night

“Well?” he demanded

“I can hear the whimpers coming from you... What are you waiting for? You're already branded! What's the harm of getting this done quickly.”

.......................................

As I lay there writhing in pain and agony and crying, Trying to forget the horrible memory

I wondered how much worse it would get.

The worst part wasn’t even the pain of the branding itself,

no,

it was the fear of what that mark represented.

After being dragged away from the slave pens and being chained to one of the walls I could do nothing but think, to let my thoughts fester to whimper and cry about my situation,

but you could do that for only so long before you actually begin to analyze your own situation,

so after an hour or so I was forced to stop crying completely and start trying to sort things out logically.

My first problem was obvious, as much as I hated to admit it, but if I were to ever get out I needed magic, And magic was commonplace in this world I mean, the people used it all day and night.

It was what gave birth to technology and what allowed their lives to progress faster.

If I were to ever manage to escape I’d need to learn how to use magic as well as apply it, but there is a reason why no slave used magic.

Magic was well freedom was the first thing the slave population would lose, as soon as someone became a slave he or she would go through the Rites,

a ceremony continuing rituals where a citizen would become a slave of the land, and that ceremony and rituals would yank out your ability to perform any kind of magic.

The only way the country could keep slaves alive for long was if the people used their slaves to perform certain tasks, and once a year they would come to collect them in preparation for war.

There is a tradition going back to the dawn of civilization, a tradition that has never wavered, not to mention those stolen abilities though would then be sold like common commodities,

Magic had become a luxury to be bought and sold and used only when the price was high enough,

They were willing to pay any price to ensure their power.

The world's history had depicted magic as an invisible fire, according to the information I gathered from the various memories running around in my mind,

I was on some different world than earth that much was clear, this world hadn't named itself like we did all this boy knew was that we lived on a massive continent that was divided into two parts,

eastern and western separated by a great desert, a massive mountain range, an enormous forest, and a sea.

The western and eastern parts of the continent were populated, but the central portion lived on was uninhabitable to the humans as it was filled with monsters, elves, and other hundred different races

And In the eastern section, the world was ruled by several cities that had power, \

but unlike in the west where things were governed by kingdoms, empires, republics, and unions the easterners were governed from city to city and the largest and strongest of those cities , were built by the dwarves who lived in the northern part of the continent.

But I am getting off-topic here

the main gist of the situation as far as I could understand was the western part of the continent was like the roman empire and Europe in the middle ages earth,

It was ruled by kings and aristocracy while The northern part of the continent was different in that while all the lands and cities within a few miles radius were nomadic,

everyone who wasn’t human was living on a vast land were ruled by nomadic tribesmen,

the central region was like the modern world of Europe where a bunch of different states excited that a bunch of different races and their different governments ruled,

such as dwarves, elves, goblins, orcs, vampires, werewolves, werepeople, centaurs, and many more.

Such as the southern area, although somewhat nomadic and tribal in character,

were also inhabited by very intelligent, advanced, creative people, and although they lived mostly nomadic, they were still highly socialized.

And the great eastern region was like ancient china or so I think

can't be a hundred percent sure on that.

The land is very fertile and rich in mineral resources. They have huge factories, factories of gold and silver ore and gems, factories of iron ore, iron ores and steel ore and coal, mills producing silk, cotton cloth and wood, and the whole of the east are populated by numerous countries, each of which has their own language, cultures, language, laws, traditions, religions, etc.

As it should be...

This world was a paradise for the humans and a hell for me.

As I lay there on the cold hard floor feeling the coolness sink in,

I felt myself thinking of magic, according to my memories,

this world had a pretty massive long history of nearly Ninety thousand years,

the first period was dubbed the age of Warlocks or the dark ages,

In this period of time frame for nearly three millennia magic was only available to those who were born with it,

and unlike today magic had no system of teaching or progression,

every single one had a somewhat different ability for example imagine a boy was born he could use mana to run really fast another could breathe fire another manipulate water, like x-men mutants each person born with magic utilized in a different way,

and so these people were monikered warlocks and their magic use as warcraft, and these used their power for thing and one thing only, to kill,

Warlocks in the early ages and even today were nothing but living breathing weapons that were used as soldiers or assassins by the powerful or evil men of the times.

This history of magic went back several centuries before man had started to colonize the World and even longer beyond.

It wasn't until the First Norzari Sorceered appeared that it was discovered that some people had other forms of magic such as powers of healing,

that some people could manipulate energy,

that some people could communicate telepathically,

some people had the potential to heal themselves and other people by merely concentrating on the task for a prolonged period of time,

some people could cast spells by simply imagining that they could cast those spells,

And when first the university of magic was established by some people calling themselves the Azoroth Arcanist did the world find out that magic was not just a tool for weapons and this gave birth to the age of gods where

Arcanist, soccers, witches, mages, magicians, mancers, and black magicians came out.

They were like Gods, and they were not only revered for their gift but their magic had an undeniable magical value.

The Azoroth Arcanists set out to study all manner of magic but the most common type was healing magic, the power to cure wounds.

So over the course of five millennia, the Azoroth Arcanists studied and recorded hundreds of thousands of magic spells and performed miracles of every type,

but the most popular and widely practiced method of using magic was for Druids to control plants and animals through the use of mind magic,

the art of mind-bending,

manipulation and controlling animals for good purposes or to make things easier for the user to accomplish whatever the people wished,

and thus the mind became a major force in the development of magic itself.

So, for the twenty thousand years magic developed freely as the ones in power were the people who could use and apply magic it wasn't until the civil war of magic that things changed.

The world of magic somehow got split into two groups the mystics artists such as sorcerers, warlocks, alchemists, witches, mages,mancers on one side who used magic as a tool of the mind to do magic

and on the other side were martial artists the magic users who used mana or magic to strengthen their bodies and arms and legs.

Both sides of the magical community fought against each other,

war erupted almost everywhere for centuries as the two factions battled and at times the magic users lost their numbers in droves,

at other times the armies were victorious and at others, it fell to the people of war who were called warriors.

Over time both sides suffered massive losses that allowed the age of man to come forward with the roar of the machines, steam engines, firearms, and bombs.

Allowing the common people to compete for power and wealth as well as to gain greater understanding and knowledge of the nature of magic, the peoples of men conquered the world, and eventually,

without a word, they took it all for themselves.

For centuries both sides of the war were left fighting and killing each other on an equal footing.

The war raged on for decades and it didn't end until about 500 years after the Great Purge during the Second Great battle of Pontus.

By that point wizards and warriors were already in decline as they too were dying out and losing their power.

And so came the age of machines and the common people used the machines to prosper while discriminating and suppressing the magically blessed.

It wasn't until when The Alchemist of Kreia discovered that every single living being had magic and could use it by opening their third eye with the aid of potions, meditation, and mana giving birth to again for the next century the alchemists and mage masters could learn the basics of how to manipulate mana and open their third eye.

They created their own special kind of magic, which they later called the "Wizardy".

That same generation was the one that created the "Wizard" academy, a place for magic users who weren't wizards themselves to train.

It was founded by a man who, by the name of Gaius, was a wizard but had never been able to achieve his full potential as a wizard, but pretty soon it was discovered the third eye only allowed you to sense and manipulate the world energy through which magic was performed,

people no longer needed to stick one particular path they could choose to become whatever they wanted as each tile began to practice their own brand of magic the world was once again divided into factions once again this time it wasn't about what you did with mana but how you gathered it,

Such as the Mages had their separate school where all kinds of different magic users taught each other and together, they made a new kind of science of magi.

But the wizards were of different mind who used a different way to properly utilize their new abilities and they used them to better the lives of everyone.

Spirit path, mage path, black path, demonic path, arcane path, mind path, and body path were few of the thousand or so path that came into existence and that led to another war where magic was used to enslave others.

That was also when the age of the infinite oaths arose,this was not a peaceful era, magic users fought each other for supremacy, and the world of magic was split into two worlds, the dark and light,

it wasn't till the end of the Third Dark and light War that peace came.

After the war, the age of peace came for the people of men but not because the darkness and light were gone or the dark and light were finally coming together.

It was because everyone was exhausted from war but that did not last long.

In fact, the cycle of war began anew, wars continued and spread like a virus, and wars were a plague spreading across the whole world,

but there was one thing that helped the people, the power of faith.

The power faith was a newly discovered power well untapped and unharvested faith,

faith which was believed by mankind to be a pure and perfect faith, t

he power faith had the power to protect people from the evils of the earth which were trying to destroy everything they touched,

the power faith had the power to purify the earth by cleansing the pollution of the sun and moon,

with war weakening the magic users the holy and unholy churches rose to power leading the continent to the an era of faith that rekindled the power of machines and gunpowder and which helped to bring the age of men back to life and bring them out of the dark ages of ignorance and superstition,

a day when the people had found something more powerful than themselves to rely on,

the power of faith which brought them peace and happiness,

that was the era of the first great peace.

This lead to the longest era of peace and tranquility yet and it lasted for nearly ten thousand years until the rise of the Radiants

that ended the long history of peace between the world.

The wizards, the sorcerers, the arcanist, the alchemists, the warlocks, the witches, it didn't matter who you were everyone had something in common

That was the world energy or mana as they named it.

The only difference was how you use it and how it was applied but all the magic wielders had this in common they had the ability to sense mana and manipulate it but they only had the ability to manipulate a limited amount of mana

, to combat this issue they created the mana pool where they would gather, store and refine the world energy in order to become more powerful,

the more mana one had in one's pool the more powerful they were.

but noone had the ability to go on forever

for example, a mage had the ability to transform elemental energy into mana in order to cast spells but he or she could only cast a certain number of spells in a day depending on how large his or her mana pool was,

to further simplify if I had the power to throw fireballs I could only throw a finite amount till my mana ran out.

But radiants were different they were begins of infinite mana as they directly used mana of the world instead of gathering and refining it into their own mana pool,

and one more it didn't matter who you were once you choose a path to become a magic user you were stuck on in a mage can't become a wizard can't become a sorcerer and so on and on, it was a rule of nature

Once you choose something you would stuck to that path till the very end

But radiants weren't bound by nature like that they could become anything they wanted when they wanted today they could be alchemists tomorrow they could be wizards and with their infinite mana they could just cast spells that would exhaust the highest tier magic users all day and every day wasting no time,

causing them to be so powerful and strong that become some of the strongest people around, they could become gods if they wanted to, or devils or angels, and all of them, were the best magus that had ever existed And they weren't restricted to only the use of mana,

so that is exactly what they did

They became rulers emperors, gods, and goddesses, and so began the era of radiant or more commonly known as the era of the abysmal tyrants,

tyrants that were called The Radients, and the world was thrown into chaos.

The Radients began conquering the lands and leaving death and destruction in their wake and slowly destroying the people of the land.

At some point, they began ruling over the world as kings and queens while all magic users were treated as slaves or criminals and forced to do terrible tasks to serve them.

The wars between kingdoms and empires escalated and eventually turned into a war of annihilation.

As the power of the Radiants grew stronger and stronger the population grew smaller and smaller.

Until, the world banded together to fight the radiants, the most powerful group in the world,

Every imaginable group that had any strength of strength or talent joined forces and attacked.

GODS, ETHEREAL BEINGS, GREATER DEAOM, HIGH SIPRTS, every form of otherworldly being was called upon to join hands and attack the Radients,

as a result,

The world was changed into hell. People fought each other,

countries and civilizations were destroyed, and the entire world was wiped clean.

Everything that once had lived inside it was destroyed and nothing remained,

Until they finally defeated the greatest enemy they had ever met and for a long time they succeeded,

GOds were called to this plane

The Radients died off until only a few handful children remained, who were hunted and killed till none remained and thus ended the great radiant war that lasted well over two thousand years leading us to the current era the era of light, and as I watched the blue golden flickering flame dancing on my right feet, touching licking my bare skin like the caress of the wind, I felt terrified, excited and happy all at the same time, because this confirmed one thing

that terrified and excited me

I was a radiant.