The Eyes That Make the Storm

Noor Must Die

warning: this is not a continuation of the old TETMTS, this will be the new prologue/ first chapter, if you all like it, I can update with the new version.

Prologue:

There were complications with my birth. I was in the wrong position, the umbilical cord was acting as a scarf, and when they finally got me out, I was silent. Too silent.

They didn't think I was going to make it. And I know no one tried to change my fate. So they stood by, hands idle, tucked in pockets as they watched me take my first and what they hoped would have been my last breath.

But I was a fighter, and I pulled through. Often times,just like the people in that room, I died there too. If I was alive, it meant they had something to kill.

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Ch. 1 Noor Must Die

If you're unlucky enough to be born in Cassia, there are nine essential rules to know. You'll only learn one here.

Fate is decided from birth. And unlike what is written in the storybooks, there's no changing it in Cassia.

The moment life is confirmed, the ruling must be as well.

Here, everyone has a sway- a power, an ability, something that makes them unique- or in her case, something that makes them damned for eternity.

There are two different types of sways. The first and the stronger of the two agrestal- they come from the Earth. Or at least that's where their origin is presumed. No one truly knows.

The first sighting of an Agrestian was hundreds of years ago. A mother found her youngest son making waves in a pond that was frozen. The ice was three inches thick. And yet the boy, only six at the time, had formed a whirlpool under the barrier. His playtime wiped out every living thing in the water.

Next, a fifteen-year-old girl snapped her fingers a little too hard and accidentally set her house on fire. They found her in the rubble of her former home, clutching the skeletal hand of her father.

An elderly man was cloud gazing, and as everyone swore, the clouds followed his command. Except in his case, they did. That particular day he wanted a cooler evening for his city, so he asked the clouds to move closer; he didn't know they'd listen. All the clouds within a fifty-mile radius flocked to him like a moth to light. He never told the clouds to leave, so they never did. Until the day he died, the city never saw a sunny day again, and neither did their crops. It was either flee the famine city or die. There were sixty-seven graves dug before the town was abandoned.

Agrestians bring death and have created a veil of darkness over Cassia for centuries. Artificials bring a light.

Their sways were created in a lab in reaction to the first three Agrestian sightings. The Cassian people were terrified. Never knowing when a disaster would come next. If they angered the wrong person, would the sky fall on them next? Would they be collateral to someone's rampage? Their questions went unanswered until the court had the idea to fight fire with fire.

'We all burn together.'

Except, the artificial fires don't burn as bright. The strongest Artificial will continually be bested by the Agrestian just as the average bear can still slaughter the strongest ox.

If they couldn't replicate the power independently, maybe they could find a way to harness it.

The guards gathered as many Agrestians as possible, the strongest Artificial in the land, and bred them like farm animals. Agrestians with Artificials. Agrestians with Argrestians, even Artificials with Artificial. Every offspring came out swayless, except for one Agrestian, resulting from the two different sway's procreation. They adjusted and only paired one sway type with the other. A hundred couplings this time- zero Agrestian offspring. Outside the compound wall, however, an Artificial civilian couple birthed an Agrestian child. No one knows how Agrestians came to be, nor do they know how they stand to exist when they don't follow the same hereditary rules. This sway seems to be as random as an obscure disease.