-Whisper of War-
Prologue

The sky was a slow, dusky gray. The kind that brought back quiet memories of long rainy days and hot coffee mugs, memories of carefree laughter and girlish fantasies, memories of a life that had once been so real…so familiar…

Evelyn leaned against a tall window and looked out with weary eyes. There had once been a forest out there – tall proud oaks with rough bark and cool leaves that seemed to stretch up into the sky endlessly. She used to run through their shadows with her long blonde hair flying in tangles behind her and her clothes covered with mud. There was a wild confidence to the forest that was contagious…

She used to think it invincible.

Now there was nothing left but half-hearted stumps, broken remnants of the proud unbreakable oaks that had once ruled the skies. The forest had been desecrated…but then again, all of Allayna had been destroyed. Never in her darkest nightmares had Evelyn imagined things would end up like this. Allayna had always been Heaven on earth – her home, her Paradise. Now, she barely recognized it.

Beautiful works of architecture were now pieces of rubble, lying stranded across burnt grounds. Thriving fields, once full of neat rows of crops, were now lifeless. Streets were bleak and empty, echoing of death intheir terrible silence. And always, in the distance there was the sound of crying…a child sobbing, terrified and alone with both parents killed in battle; a mother weeping, hugging the bodies of her dead children; a soldier breaking down, unable to escape from the never-ending nightmare of warfare; an ordinary farmer with tears streaming down his cheeks and a prayer on his lips…the same prayer everyone else whispered night after night, hopeless eyes staring up into the dark while horrors filled their minds. “Let it be over…please, just let it be over…”

Evelyn looked away.

This wasn’t the way things were supposed to happen. The Great War had been over a century ago, and peace had reigned unchallenged. There were to be no more wars; everyone had said there would be no more wars. How could they have all been so blind? So damn blind…

Now they would all pay. Her, most of all. But even as she stood up slowly and headed down the stairs, a hollow emptiness settling in her chest, Evelyn could not have even begun to realise the twists of fate awaiting her.

Her story of war was to be a story of love.