PREQUEL?

Just want to share the start of the prequel to Legend of the Arch Magus (not sure yet if I’ll release this or write I Was Summoned as the Ancestor! instead).

****Before becoming renowned, an unnamed boy (Evander) was born in the Landfills and was taken in by a banished criminal.

CHAPTER 1:

The Landfill was no ordinary dumping ground.

Once an empty, forgotten stretch of wasteland, it had become the Magic Empire’s refuse pit for the failures of sorcery, alchemy, and forgotten inventions. Broken constructs, shattered crystals, leaking phials, warped spell scrolls, and half-finished magical artifacts piled up into endless mountains of detritus.

A massive region of despair.

A place so vast it could swallow several cities whole.

A region that also served as a place of banishment for criminals, political enemies, heretics, and those deemed too dangerous or too inconvenient to keep within civilized lands.

Once cast into the Landfill, there was no return.

The world outside regarded it as both a prison and a grave. A place where undesirables were left to slowly lose their minds amid the wreckage of failed sorcery and alchemical refuse.

Survival here was no simple thing.

The very air carried a toxic residue of discarded magic. Those who dwelled too long among the refuse found their thoughts splintering. Paranoia, madness, and hallucinations crept into the mind like rot through wood. Within five years, even the strongest-willed scavenger would be reduced to a raving husk, devoured by insanity.

The only known reprieve came in the form of small, bitter-tasting pills—an antidote distributed once a year at the Landfill’s border by government guards.

Yet the guards never dealt with the common folk directly. They handed the supply to the gangs, who hoarded the pills like treasure. Through this monopoly, the gangs decided who would think clearly and who would spiral into madness. Those who opposed them were cut off—doomed to descend into insanity.

Naturally, the gangs lived like nobles and kings within the Landfill, governing and protecting their respective territories:

The Vultures of the North.

The Silver Rats of the South.

The Butcher of the West.

The Madman of the Magic Tower in the East.

And the Lone Wolf who lived at the center—at the junction of the four territories.

SPOILERS:

****The Lone Wolf was the one who raised Evander Alaester after finding him abandoned beneath a pile of rotting corpses. He was also the original Evander Alaester—the name later taken by the boy after his death.