The sky turned red the night that comet came. There was no prophecy or prediction of its coming, it was a surprise in a world where everything always stayed the same.I can remember it like it was yesterday. I was just a child back then. I knew nothing and had nothing, so that sky was my everything.

That sky really was beautiful. The red overwhelmed the usual dark, yet it did not extinguish the stars; rather, it seemed to brighten their radiance. Every night the sky turned into a sea of stars, like eyes looking down on me. I could feel their presence in my heart even now. If one looked up, you would see the rings of the world towering over you, shining with stardust falling like snow across the sky. Beyond it, one would see the sea of ever-distant stars in their full glory, demonstrating the divine tapestry, with their light reaching out to touch this world. One could see all the great constellations of the south: Tyrion’s amulet, the Crown of Life, and Algar’s last stand. 

Every night, there was something new to see. Every night, I felt the purpose of living fill me. Life would be simple with such cheap beauty in it, I thought. I wished every night. If the stars ever were able to hear my wishes, surely it was then. In my dreams, I wish only ever to see this sky so I may never forget it.

All I cared about was looking at that sky, but everyone else became worried about frivolous things. There was no prophecy from any oracle, nor did any astronomer predict its coming, unlike with other reliable comets — no, this comet was unplanned. People tend to overreact to even the smallest things if they are not according to plan. 

Some said that the comet was a promise of the coming of everlasting peace, a golden age which would lead all to everlasting utopia. Others said that the comet foretold the end of time, and that it was here to whisk away the innocent and sinless to safety. Some took it as proof that the gods still lived; others felt it confirmed their deaths.

The more dazzling those nights became, the deeper the hysteria grew. A single summer of darkness was all the comet needed—just two months, and the world was forever altered. Madmen were looked to for guidance, Nihilists were given trust, Geniuses were given no limits, and Saints were scorned and martyred. 

A golden age for chaos, which would change everything.

The Age of Darkness ended, and thus began the Age of Comet.

As for me, as I said, I was just a child then and knew little of the world. Even now, I don’t care for any talk of what it all meant. All I can say is that ever since that summer, my only wish is to see that beautiful sky once more.

This is the dream I wish to keep. This is what I seek.

---

My life is easy to explain. I am not so different from the comet.

About eight years before the sky turned red, I entered this world unwanted. 

My mother was a maid who worked for the house of Lunabrecht in the city of Sternberg. The city of Sternberg being the capital of the duchy of Moghland in the realm of Ringeland.

It was a generous job for a village girl with nothing but the clothes on her back. that had been thrown out by her parents, unwilling to keep feeding a mouth too weak to keep up the farm. The Lunabrecht clan, being one of the eight great houses of the Ringeland, was a great honor even to be a servant of such a family. However, in modern times, the Lunabrecht family was mired by debt and had fallen far from its once prominent position. They had kept their title to the duchy of Moghland, but at the cost of the sale of entire baronies, counties, and even the most precious of artifacts. 

That is why it was excellent news when Otto Lunabrecht, the sole male heir to the Lunabrecht clan, was set to marry Mildred Von Segernus. The Segernus clan was one of the wealthiest clans in all of western Vilirillia as they built their trade and banking empire within Ringeland and even abroad, but they were young and upstart, and what they lacked was the respect of the old families, which would not give them the time of day. Lunabrecht may have fallen far, but they were still an ancient clan that garnered respect among those who remembered the old days. Even the common folk were giddy to hear the news, for taxes in Moghland were the strictest in the empire, and with the possibility of a sudden investment, the people got it into their minds that they would now have a more merciful lord. The people got their hopes up so much that they even decided to throw a grand festival and willingly give more to finance an elaborate wedding.

But what does this all have to do with me? 

Everything, unfortunately. It would turn out that a fortnight before the vows could be done, I was born a month premature. Had I been born just after the wedding, everything would have been sorted out differently. Had I taken after my mother, then no one would have cared or batted an eye at the birth of a maid’s daughter. Had I even come out without a full head of hair, that would have been fine too, for a time at least.

Yet they say that the goddess had a sense of humor the day I was born.

I was born with a full head of iridescent silver-white hair and sparkling emerald eyes. Ordinarily, that might mark me as some kind of witch child or something in that vein, but there was no mystery as to the source of it.

I inherited it from my father, Otto Lunabrecht.

One does not usually have to wonder why it happened. Servants of the nobility sometimes have children without a father, who still never go hungry. One blinks twice and moves on. 

House Lunabrecht is a bit of an exception to that. Lunabrecht being among the most ancient houses, thus, there are laws inscribed into the bloodline itself. One such law is the punishment for adultery, which simply prescribes death to all involved. A law meant to prevent this exact situation of a sudden confusion in the line of succession, though one out of fashion for good reason.

Once invoked, it can not be escaped, for it is a curse written in one’s blood.

There, of course, is plenty of rope given to get out of the situation; one simply has to come to the reasonable conclusion of removing the source of the issue.

Kill the maid, make the child disappear one way or another, and beg for forgiveness. The Von Segerns, being of the new nobility, made it even simpler for they cared more for the purity of silver than the purity of blood.

What happened next was where things went truly wrong in the world. My father, they say, had always been a distant man who had an inhuman quality to him. His head had been so lost in the stars that he did not even bat an eye at the news of his betrothal. 

It was one thing for a sudden affair with a servant to come out so suddenly. With that alone, they could at least look at him and say. “Ah, so he is human after all.” 

They had it all wrong, though. He never loved my mother, nor did he care about the pleasures of the flesh. He was led to a singular point in his life, in which he placed his entire life purpose into.

Even if it cost everything else, he would not throw that away. He was that sort of foolish man.

“This is my child! Only she may be the true heir of the stars!”

I was legitimized by my father, not only acknowledged as his, but also as his first and what would turn out to be only child. A child he swore in blood was to take the name of Lunabrecht, and not a bastard. He married my mother and made an unbreakable blood oath, claiming me under the old customs so that not even the emperor would be able to reverse it.

All for the daughter of a maid.

It was lunacy. The heir all looked to as the new rising star suddenly crashed down, bringing all with him into the depths of madness. What would have been a provincial gossip became the scandal of the decade.

He was selfish all the way through and made no excuses. He gave no reason for the breaking of the betrothal, and at no point defended himself. A single lie, and he would have been saved. A single profession that it was out of temporary madness, love, or anxiety, and he would have given enough to go on.

Without that, nothing remained but the verdict for marrying another while already bethrothed.

The sin of adultery in its rawest form, given no excuse. There was only one outcome to be had.

They never believed he would go down that path, and they never believed he would be as unyielding as he was. Yet that man, until the end, chose me over reason.

On the day of the great festival, when the province was supposed would turn itself around into a new era, he was hanged. No investment came. Taxes went up even higher. My grandfather, the patriarch, grew older, and without my father, he was left with an incompetent son squabbling over who would take over.

Slowly, the province fell into chaos. War came abroad, and peasants went off to die by the thousands. Those who came back returned empty-handed and soaked in the blood and anger of their fallen brothers. They sacked their own province, and without the help of the rest of the Aristocratic faction of families within the empire, Lunabrecht would have fallen completely.

Most of the Lunabrechts were slaughtered back then. Some put up a fight, but the peasantry showed no mercy and blamed us for everything.

They weren’t wrong. That man was the source of it. He knew the stars better than anyone. He knew the way that led to peace and prosperity, and he showed them all the way to it, only to break that when he saw something else in the stars. He betrayed everyone for that singular thing and broke trust forever, all for that.

A baby that would lead to the deaths of thousands. 

He chose my life over his own; it was greatly selfish, and I have always resented him for that. 

He was not a lunatic, though, and he was never wrong.

He had made his choice to defy human logic, but he was not wrong.

He was what we know as a magician.