Prologue.

The little girl's steps were light as she walked on the broken road from a time before she existed. Shrubs and trees speckled the hard, cracked blacktop, allowing color to give personality to the boring slate-grey. The road continued curving and meandering to what used to be a bridge several hundred feet off the ground. To the other side, her destination awated her.

With a running start, she cleared the fifty foot gap with ease, looking back to gaze at the giant mechanized hand lay detached over the remains to the middle section of the bridge. It was far from the equally large robot destroyed in the old war; its sentience no longer present.

The girl decided it was time to leave once she noticed the flying ships making their annual courses to the city of Eden; a floating chunk of land the size of an entire continent, and the host of the most prestigious schools in the world, or what is left of it. After the war ended, the humans, elves, and beastkyn all came together and created cities in the air. They left the surface to reclaim what it once owned, as well as what horrors and experiments were created for chaos and destruction, like herself.

It didn't take long for her to get to the garden. That's what she named the beautifully overgrown ruins of what once was a zoo. Here was a safe haven for herbivores such as the elk that grazed in herds next to the creek. Few predators were found in this territory, the ones that didn't know any better.

The girl continued walking and weaving through the old orchard grounds until she came to a comfortably-sized house; the sides were covered in orange and yellow flowers that smelled delicious.

Inside, she could hear the clanging of pots; a noise that made her smile light up even more. She opens the door and greets the person inside with a warm smile.

"It has been too long, brother."