Finn's Journal Entry #1 | Dawn of a New Day

This is the first in a series of journal entries that I'll be sharing in the time leading up to and following Echoes of Evalas and other content in the world of Evalas. For those unfamiliar, lost, or otherwise confused, the listeners (or readers in this case) know little of this world and the characters that reside there. I encourage you to enjoy the scattered pieces of this puzzle as things begin to take shape. When the time comes, these entries will be collected and baked into a narrated video. Until then, join me on our first steps into a new story...

There's something terribly intimidating about a journal filled with nothing but blank pages. Not only a new chapter, but an entirely new book. Spine still stiff, unfamiliar with the ink that fills the well next to it.

Do you feel that twisting feeling in your stomach too? Well. If you had one, journal.

Day one at the College and I've already begun speaking to a journal as if it were a familiar. I may not be cut out for this. Or perhaps every great mage is a bit mad. I've no idea if that's true, of course, but it's a small comfort to think it might be.

Orientation was uncomfortable. I could feel a hundred eyes on me. Could only just make out some of the whispers. The new class didn't have many of us from the southland, but it wasn't hard to find the others when the groups filtered us out. There are three of us. Strangers bound by this happenstance of what side of an invisible line we were born on.

Three. In a group of dozens.

The people hold such reverence for the Goddess, they speak of her light. They speak of the Glory Beyond that awaits their great heroes from the war. Could she not spare us some of her light as well? They took our homes, our lives, our families. Am I to believe that an ever present, loving, mindful Goddess sat idly by while I lay in the ashes of my home? That her goodness was afforded to me only after having the faces of my mother and father forever blotted out from my memory by darkness unrelenting?

The only light I've known is that of the fires lit in her name.

The father I do know, I am grateful for. I am. I tell myself this constantly. I swear that it's the truth. But we both saw it as I said my goodbyes and made my way here. The rift between us has grown, and I fear that this new book is one that won't have enough of him in it to keep this truth alive. I'm not a child anymore. Not sure I ever was.

The days of walking through the gardens and studying the flowers together were nothing but a distant memory as I stood alone in the corner of the atrium with my two peers. Strangers who share this forgotten history with me, from a land with no name. Uprooted and discarded, for reasons unclear to even those wielding the blades that pruned our branches.

Heavens help me. At the very least, take this quill from my hand. All of this reflection has exhausted me.

Thank you, journal. For your patience, and for the comfort. It's just us.

Talk again soon.

-Finneas