The Girl in the Mask

Prologue

Darkness swept across the rugged moorland. A harsh wind roared into the marshes, rustling the few trees in the landscape to panic and leaving no shelter safe from its power. An icy chill ran among the moors, like an infection spreads throughout the body, letting illness linger wherever it passes and driving the body to corruption - it was a foul night.

A grand manor stood in the center of this deserted land, striking outward like a lighthouse's guiding rays, which direct weary sailors away from deadly rocks and shallow seas. It was a mighty structure and the strong oak timbers that assured it would never collapse held it high into the night. On the bottom floor of this house, in the largest of all its halls, a masquerade ball was taking place.

One hundred fine people had gathered from miles around to attend the ball. The people who wore their precious dresses and suits and finely crafted masks on their faces were dancing in the vast expanse of the hall. Silk dresses and leather shoes streamed and swayed back and forth the hall as these people danced cheerfully and there was a smile on every face.

Every face but one.

The young, daringly beautiful girl stood on the outskirts of the dancing. Her skin was soft and pure, without blemishes. Her azure blue eyes were as deep as the sky, and her light blond hair fell perfectly down her shoulders like water flows, with grace, down a river. But behind her mask, behind the outside appearance, far inside the heart of her mind, there was no beauty. Her thoughts were troubled. And among all the glee before her, she could no longer stand it.

She swam away from the crowd and sifted herself from these blissfully happy people. Completely unnoticed, she pulled a glass door on the edge of the hall open and slipped out of the hall, away from the perpetrators of her growing anger. She slipped outward. Outdoors.

Into the chill.

Into the wind.

Into the darkness.