Prologue

Change:

For hundreds of years I have been trying to find a way to be like the others, to not be cursed any more. I was born as a moon elf, yet I'm different from the others, including the dark and high elves. I was born as an aberration, the only elf in the plane of Svartalfheim without the ability of using magic. In all my life I have been thought that I was cursed, that I was abandoned by the Gods. They never answered my prayers, their priests ignored me or gave me vague answers and I spent all my time studying the aspects of magic learning everything I could about them, and spent all these years cooped up in my research tower my clan owns.

They are willing to pay for it so that they can hide their shame in it, I knew that the day I decided to give in and do my research here. For a while there were a few servants coming here, but a few decades ago a high elf inventor made a device that can be used to teleport supplies easily, and it quickly spread among the nobility, including my clan. They just built that device in the storage room and now not a soul has visited since then. The loneliness was soul crushing, but not any more. Not since that dream in which he appeared. Now being alone is a gift ever since that dream.

He appeared to me in all his cold and dark, radiating empty eminence in my dreams. I instantly knew he is the reason. I knew he didn't curse me that I wasn't a sinner or anything, but instead it was a necessity, that it will lead to freedom, our true freedom from the shackles of fate and limitations. This powerlessness is a necessary sacrifice that I'll have to endure for a few more lifetimes before I can attain power so that I won't become like those cursed with arrogance. I've seen some of those in the time when I wasn't exiled from society, I've seen how those who gained great power were turned to arrogance and then failed miserable once that lead to their ruin. I'll be not like them, I promised this one thing to myself, and to him.

The Dream ended as quickly as it started. I woke up still feeling the cold warmness of his presence all over my being. I knew that it wasn't just some fever dream, but it was real in its own way. The mark on my chest was proving this too, proving that change has come in my existence finally, real change. I've even begun to feel the flow of mana and all its mutations in the air that I never felt before. Yet I have to be patient still, I may feel it now, but I'm still unable to use it.

And now here I am looking in the mirror I see the vine like cracks on my pale skin of my throat peeking out from the dark gilded moderately elegant robes. I get off the robe, revealing my slim torso and the cracks spreading like the roots of an upside down tree's roots. A few more days and it will completely envelop my body and when that happens, I'll finally leave this world behind to start the journey…

Arrival

The sound of twigs and logs breaking, the running of the pursued and pursuers, and the occasional deep voice screaming orders reverberated through the forest during the afternoon.

A single moon elf who appears to be in his early 20s is being chased by a pack of barghests, Orcs, and Humans. The boy is still ahead of his pursuers slowing them with nature magic, throwing twigs, and rocks and making the trees grow tendril like spears to maybe eliminate some of his pursuers with little success.

The three Barghest chase the lone moon elf with a speed that almost makes them appear like thin lines in the fabric of reality. The beasts haven't been fed yet by their owners, they were promised fresh meat for today. They crash through the trees like their hide was made from adamantine, accidentally blocking the way for their masters running behind them. But they are not as durable as they think, the elf conjures a thick and long root from the earth and as one of the Barghest crashes through it, it breaks it skull open, and the Barghest crashes dead into one of the trees.

Of the two remaining Barghest one changes its course and rushes to the corpse and starts tearing and chewing the corpse. The other starts to slow down a bit to better evade the incoming roots and rocks that the moon elf sends in its way.

Not long after, the moon elf stops. He arrived at the edge of the forest, more precisely at the edge of a chasm that is between the forest and the largest mountain on the northern basin, and the world of Elysium. He stands on the edge of the elevated cliff, behind him the last remaining Barghest gets closer, almost reaching the end of the trees. "Tsukuyomi-sama, I really need your blessing right now." he weakly exclaims to the darkening skies.

For a little while he waits, but then starts to look left and right, but realizes that the Barghest is too close, and if he starts to run in either direction the beast will eventually catch up to the already tired him. He still decides that is his best option, but before he could start to run the Barghest arrives a few feet away at him, and almost lunges at him, but a loud horn noise stops the Barghest in place. The noise of the small war band approaching them gets closer and closer.

When the band of orcs and northern humans exited the forest and circled around the single young moon elf, he started to slowly back towards the edges of the Cliffside. The single barghest that caught up to him before the group started to slowly approach him with dripping mouth. The elf stops just before he would step on air, and starts to look down, pondering that jumping down dying from the fall maybe a better fate. He notices that he can see water flowing down on the bottom. He starts to think that maybe he may survive if he uses some of his nature magic that he learned during his village's lessons.

He readies himself with a deep breath and is about to jump. But before he could, the cliff where he stood with the barghest not far from him erupts into a dark sphere like explosion that is a mix of shadow and mist flames, envelopes the gradually naturally elevated Cliffside where the single moon elf and the barghest stood. The explosion sends out a shockwave that sends the group of orcs and humans on their backs, even killing two of them who were the closest to the event. The two, a human and orc got hit by the dark shadowy mist flames and their face and chest decayed down to the bone, even parts of their bones turned to dust leaving behind macabre of corpses that miss their faces and chest, both flesh and bone wise.

And the whole even ends as quickly as it started within a blink of an eye.

When the leader of the group, a large orc around 2 meters tall with long braided dark hair that is shaved on the right side revealing war tattoos on his pale grey skin gets back up, he sees that both the moon elf and the barghest disappeared and two of his fastest trackers are dead in an unrecognizable way. He goes to check the ruined edges where the cliff started once, and looks down finding nothing just rocks and damaged roots, that are seemed to be corrupted with their ends dyed in a black hue that seems to eat away the surrounding light emitting a shadow like mist.

He has a feeling of ominous, cold dread coursing through his entire body. Not only that, but he knows that whatever happened, it wasn't the moon elf's making or its Gods. He knows it is the work of something wicked, abhorrent being's doing. Furthermore, he feels the dark winds of change blow his long dark hair…