Prologue Astra Vitae et Mortis: Forgotten Promises

"These stories will once kill you!" you hear behind your mother's desperate, nearly hysterical yell.

Mad you shut the door of your bedroom and with tears of anger or sorrow in your eyes you hopelessly fall into the bed.

It's sheets are tender and lure you to sit comfortably and indulge into the world which your mother warned you so strongly against.

You take a glimpse of your bedside table. A few volumes of your favourite series is lying there. You grab the book right on the top. Open it on the marked page and in a second you dive into the world of darkness and light, which is so much more dear to you than this fainting reality.

Ah, yes. This world. ... Has it ever got the chance to understand you?

Your soul is lost.

You despise it just as it despises you. All the people. So blind and ignorant to their own deeds.

Falling into ruins. Everyone cursed. By their own blames.

You resent thy own mother. Father. And every predecessor.

The land burned and buried by war. Ah, where had it's long forgotten heroes fell. Where died those who had stood up for their own ideals. Who had known what is truly right. Who had shaped this world into a dream which it deserved to be.

Furious you punch the pillow. Than again. Again. And again.

Suddenly as if some higher power has stopped you, with your hand outstretched in the air and your teeth clenched, you let out a growl.

A thought sparks in your head: Am I better than the others... Shouldn't I resent myself just as I resent them.

You look at the book series lying on the bedside table for the last time. And then, another thought suddenly born in your mind is the clearest decision.

You jump out of the bed, put on a winter coat and boots. And just as a pray trying to escape its prayer you ran out of your late home's door. Hearing your mother's voice behind, but ignoring it nevertheless.

Everything in your body screams: Run! Run!

And you are running. Across the snowy land. Through a forest. Crossing a frozen river. You scramble uphill. You're slipping on the snow. But desperately continuing forward. Feeling of the gates of hell opening everywhere around you. You continue to the point where hills change into high rocks. Steep abbysal slopes are starting to open uo in front of you. Even though, you still run despite the danger.

With your sensations clouded you don't pay any attention to your surroundings. You have a feeling that the whole world has turned into one enormous black hole which devours everything. Everything!

You are running furthermore. Then you are fallin or maybe flying. You cannot tell the difference. You are surrounded by blinding white nothingness. It seems liberating. Perhaps you are escaping the curse after all...