My name is Milaia.
I was born in the Kingdom of Bieno, one of six Kingdoms.
Bieno was a horrible place. Hunger, violence, thieves, cold-blooded murders were common words in our daily vocabulary.
The wounds of the past, full of war, conflict, and too much death, made the miserable life a luxurious gratitude compared to what had happened before.
Sometimes the ghosts of the past never leave, we just learn to live with them.
'The woods are a dangerous place.'
It was completely forbidden to step on them after sunset. It was a simple rule, practically learned just as a child became aware of its existence. As we grew older, we were given the reason for this strict rule. I remember reading the book "Where we all come from" for the first time when I was very young. Books always taught me more than humans.
The book told the story about what happened many, many years ago, when the world was not yet a world, men were not yet men, and history had not yet begun to be written. During the creation of the Universe, the Gods decided to create a world that they could control and care for.
The first living thing they created was a Tree, the Tree of Life. At first small and seemingly helpless, it gradually grew. It then developed roots, which spread all over the world around it. Through these long and extended roots, it was able to connect with everything that was created after it. The Tree of Life was intertwined with absolutely all the elements of nature. Elements controlled by the Gods of the universe, each of them had imposed the power of its element on various creations.
The elements were five, water, earth, air, fire, and a fifth, which no one was ever able to fully comprehend, but they say, was the most powerful. Divided, those elements were not so strong, but together they had immense power. A power capable of wiping out the entire universe. This power, being so colossal, had to be controlled somehow. So five signs were born from them, completing the circle of nature.
To protect the signs, the Gods chose humans as Kings and Queens, and therefore, established Kingdoms.
Aqua, Goddess of water, created the Kingdom of Anapos, also known as the Kingdom of the seas and the everlasting rivers. Its inhabitants learn to swim before they walk, they are practically fish in the middle of a human world.
Ventus, God of air, created the Kingdom of Eurus, the powerhouse. Equipped by huge and tall mills, it was fundamental to generate any kind of machinery used in the other Kingdoms.
Terra, Goddess of Earth, created the Kingdom of Tellus, the Kingdom of earth, from which the food for all the kingdoms was obtained. Whatever they sow in that place, grew without any trouble.
Fiono, the God of fire, created the Kingdom of Vulcan, arose around a huge volcano, whose eruptions pass like rivers through the many villages within it. Their job is to supply metals and minerals to all the Kingdoms.
And then, then there was the Fifth God with the Fifth sign.
The fifth sign that comes from the fifth and unknown element was given to two brothers, two Kings of the same Kingdom, Benedic and Crey. Their God was the leader, the head of all the Gods, the father of the others. His name is not known, nor is his sign. He chose two humans so that they could contain so much power. But they let him down.
Each one was powerful on his own, but together they were invincible. Greed and power divided the brothers. Crey believed that the power they possessed was too much to exist. Ben, on the other hand, felt the need to accumulate all the power for himself, and then conquer the others Kingdoms. He didn't want to divide it with his brother. So after creating his own Kingdom of Bieno, the Kingdom I live in, he fought against his own brother in an atrocious war in which they declared mutual and eternal contempt.
Faced with the magnitude of his brother's army, Crey formed his Kingdom Crescendo in the depths of the woods, so that neither Ben nor anyone else would ever find it and thus be able to protect anyone from the full power of the fifth element.
All was peace for thousands of years, until, twenty years ago, the Kingdom of Bieno found its eternal enemy, the Kingdom of Crescendo.
A chariot trying to go through the woods was looted. Cunningly, the owners of the chariot pursued their attackers and discovered the hidden Kingdom. That same day, the King of Bieno, Sir Lucius declared war to the King of Crescendo, Sir Gelon. Although the other Kingdoms insisted that peace was better, King Lucius refused to listen to them, justifying that it was his responsibility to end what his ancestors had begun.
The war lasted longer than expected. The King of Crescendo had practiced magic, which was forbidden, but that power and the power of the sign, was what helped him fight. This is where the story gets a little confusing, where I can never understand what really happened, since no one knows exactly. We are only told that we won, that the magic King was defeated and killed by Sir Lucius himself. But the threat remained, somehow, the people of Crescendo survived. That is why we cannot frequent the woods at night, we are in danger, they are dangerous.
I really hate not knowing what happened, how can I hate other people without knowing what they really did? And why do we have to continue an old ancient fight that should have been left in the past?
Our duty should be to learn from our mistakes, not to make them again and again. Otherwise there is no point in going on. We never fully realize how much we lose as human beings every time violence, agony and death overtake us.
It would have to be different, we would have to be different, to be able to find balance, to find peace once and for all, or to condemn ourselves to continue being those humans that the Gods themselves are ashamed of having created.
For these beliefs, I was punished multiple times in my history lessons.
For that, and for imagining any other type of life for myself, a better one, a magical one, a life no one could have predicted.
If only I would have known what was ahead...