Chapter 1: Chapter 1

It was a warm autumn day. In the sky, leaves revolved around each other in a vortex, almost as if dancing, moved by a faint wind that signaled the end of the summer.

The Sun, which had just risen high in the sky, radiated huge streets and grassy parks, greeting a new day. Slowly door houses, store signs and street tents of beggars began to open.

In Qin City, the capital of the Qinzhao Empire, everything was calm.

Despite its huge population, neither the markets, nor the schools, nor the squares boasted countless crowds that early in the morning and a quiet lullaby sung by birds dominated the atmosphere.

Merchants, office workers and labourers alike ran and walked the wide streets of a greyish marble, barely noticing each other.

The huge buildings on the left and right margins, which looked like walls of concrete and steel with their height, towered over the few carriages that trotted towards the squares. High above, on the faces of these constructions, most of the windows still let no light through. The city was slowly waking up.

Silence. The only voice that dared abruptly interrupt it, with slight pauses every few seconds, came from under the shadow of a castle and was accompanied by a finger that carefully indicated that magnificent building.

“This, gentlemen, is the famous Qin Castle! Everyone here knows that it has housed the court of three royal families from three different empires, who have ruled these territories and survived the test of time!”

Thus thundered a masculine voice, accompanied by an inevitable smile. The man had a sombrero on his head, a sign that he had not yet noticed the end of the summer, and in the huge Qizang Square, the largest the city could boast, he had gathered people of all kinds.

Not only did humans listen to him with boredom, but also elves and dwarves, normally wise races, who had already heard of all the overused myths he lazily mentioned. On the contrary, orcs and beastmen looked at him with some sort of astonishment, as if he were telling the most beautiful story.

"Few people know instead that for more than three hundred years now in these lands reigns the Xang family, the 'new' emperors are not at all new!"

"Only three hundred years..." murmured an elf, not understanding his pun. They’re known for living long, after all.

"As much as three hundred years..." said an ogre, who thought the exact opposite of the elf in front of him.

"He didn’t even try hard enough to learn the exact number of years." 

Reflected a dwarf with a loud voice, receiving angry looks from anyone who had the displeasure of hearing him.

And if someone had asked that guide, who came from isolated countryside of the Empire and barely knew the appearance of the Emperor himself, what was his greatest pleasure in living in the capital, his answer would have been the people.

Yes, certainly Qizang Square, of which it was impossible to see one end from the other and which could accommodate thousands of people, had its ghostly charm in the morning, when it was practically uninhabited and great works like the castle seemed an ancient legacy, abandoned wonders of a lost world. 

But the most fascinating thing, of all that he had experienced in the capital, was certainly the diversity of its inhabitants. Although he never left the four walls, albeit huge, of the city, it was as if he was always travelling.

This was, after all, the essence of the myth of this city. A place where the most diverse races were always accepted. A symbol of the eternal peace that the world seemed willing to offer after the war with the demons. The symbol of magic used for good, as it lit up the city with a yellowish lemon at night and by day enchanted the citizens and showed the way to the beggars. The symbol that the world was not the same as it was a few decades earlier.

This guide—Albard, that was his name—had never had the desire to travel. 

Life is funny, he used to mutter, because when you're living it to the fullest you never feel like seeing new places. You're fine with where you are. Then, when everything you love starts to fall apart, when you would most need a good journey, you lose your vitality too.

And that guide had also lost his vitality a few years before, but the scar he bore could never be healed with a journey, and not only because he lacked the money.

Then, a friend advised him to move to the capital. New places, new faces, and a new job, as well as new friends for his daughter.

But, above all...

"I’m so happy. Before doing this job, I never thought I’d see a dwarf in my life..." He thought to himself, forgetting not to speak out loud.

"I’m not a tourist attraction!"

And so that group went on talking until the evening, spending the day in that gigantic square of the city until it became dimly lit, and then returned each to their own houses.

This was the kind of day he used to live in the capital, and it was the kind of day he preferred. For when he had to return, night having fallen, he had to face the truth of things. Every night.

And so he went from the marble and greyish square, painted with stars and soaked with people, conversations and distractions, to a mere wooden table in his little house, sitting in front of his only daughter, with only a plate full of food that separated the two.

He never asked her: “how was your day?”, because by then he had understood how meaningless it was. She would not answer truthfully and the conversation would die a few seconds later.

So, his strategy was just to keep talking and overwhelm her with good news.

"Do you know that every year there is a holiday throughout the capital, which is called Mersana? It is in honor of the homonymous Goddess!" He was very proud of the information he had learned from the same people he had been a guide for during the day.

"And during this festival, you should know, everyone dresses in masks! Because Mersana is the Goddess of deception and she likes to dress up, they dress up just like she would. They copy the attire of someone else! If you say your real name or leave without a mask that day, the citizens will laugh about you!"

He laughed with joy, as if he were still a child, but he no longer found the same childish twinkle in the eyes of his daughter, who was still only fifteen years old. Sometimes he almost felt like they had reversed their roles.

She cooked for him as he went begging for money—Albard wouldn’t accept a better term, as he couldn’t understand how they could still give him money with how incompetent he was—and she’d be the one keeping what was left of the family together.

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"And this is not even the best of Qin City! If you go out by chance in the morning, you might find the Prince of the Empire! Or the Elf Princess, or the Orc General. If you’re lucky, you might even meet the old hero who defeated the demon king!"

He made such absurd statements to his daughter, trying in any way to attract her interest. In reality, though, Albard’s green eyes, always lively when he went out, were by now closed almost with fatigue and he couldn’t wait to sleep.

"That’s great, Dad..."

His daughter, who had been called Llesa, answered with a resigned and almost shy tone. She concealed an obvious disinterest, as if none of this concerned her.

She was raking the wooden table where they were having dinner with her finger, ticking as if following a melody with another finger of her left hand.

"And you can’t imagine what else awaits you! Roads as big as our house, where you can play with all your friends! Romantic spots where you can spend a midnight dream with your lover—maybe later in your life, that’s it. Musicians, merchants and street talent...!"

At that point that girl expressed a smile, the best she could muster.

"Plus, think about the school where I enrolled you! The best in the whole city, and there are thousands of them! That’s why you should thank me—your old dad has connections you can’t even imagine!" That man, who called himself old, wasn’t really that old.

Of course, you might have been fooled by his cheeks, that were now full of wrinkles and covered by whitish hair, and by a  smile that may no longer be so alive, but Albard was not over fifty, half the life of a human unable to use magic.

"Of course, thank you." 

That’s what Lleya answered. Her very rare white hair, her only physical feature of note, was not long enough to conceal a face that had the same expression as before. Her green eyes were almost closed.

"What else should I do?"

Her father said.

His voice had changed radically. If before he had been a calm and relaxed man, now he had seriously lost his temper. His wrinkles were now in plain sight.

If Llesa had not known him well, better than anyone else, she would have been surprised and frightened. But by now she understood him; she had nothing to say and kept silent. Meanwhile, the redness of Albard's face became more and more visible, his anger and self-hatred clearer.

"Tell me! How is it that you cannot be happy? Neither here nor in your old town! You had no friends there either! None!"

She kept quiet.

"Am I wrong, Llesa? If I am wrong you gotta tell me! I thought I was making you happy!"

And still nothing.

At that point, Albard could barely hold back tears. Furious that she would not answer him, he stopped talking to her, got up from the humble table on which they had just eaten dinner and headed off towards his bed.

As he went, he simply said, "I miss your mother."

And as he walked up the creaky stairs of their new home, Llesa sighed.

‘A mask? The best school in town?’ She thought to herself once Albard had left. The silence she was so used to now inhabited the entire living room of the three-room, two-storey house they had bought.

She didn't feel at home, but she could get used to it. That was the least of the problems.

She thought back to the face full of anger and sadness she had seen uttering such depressing words. And, although Llesa was the one who had caused those feelings, she felt she would do it again.  

The white-haired girl didn't mind hearing that information, she thought it had the potential to be really interesting.

But, at the same time, she knew it would be better for both of them if her father went to bed early.  By now it was difficult to talk to him, and Lleya had never been the kind of person to like difficult things.

So, every night she maintained the same attitude, with the ultimate goal of making things easier for both of them.

'However, a mask...' she thought long and hard about what she had been told. Not about the festival, of course, that was something she didn't care about. She would never leave her house during that day anyway.

However, almost by chance, she thought that perhaps a mask was what she needed at this time. That it would be easier, immensely easier, to have something like a mask, like another identity. 

‘I am so bored these days. I can’t do anything.’ This was her justification. Someone else, anyone, would have said she was crazy, but it made sense to her. She didn't want it to be permanent, the white-haired girl still had a connection to her original identity, Llesa, to maintain. Still, with nothing else keeping her tied to the years gone by, it wouldn't have been so bad to try being someone else for a few days.

And perhaps initially out of dissatisfaction, perhaps out of a simple desire to do something interesting once in a lifetime, Llesa went out that day.

In the middle of the streets now artificially illuminated by magic and populated by countless crowds, she moved without hesitation and arrived at a market, where she bought the cheapest mask she could find.

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