Magic. What is magic? To us, anything could be. The way light bounces off of objects to allow us sight, the harvest of nature to create power, electricity, medicine; all of these things are “magical” in their own right, but this story is a little more… Fantastical.

Dazai, in formal dress, walked into the soirée (or perhaps you could call it a masquerade from the masks and the costumes the noblemen and women around him wore like the people they truly were was a crime) confidently. A commanding presence, yet he blended into the crowd of loud people well. They all had secrets to hide, things to lose. Though, Dazai might have more to hide than the other people in this royally-hosted ball.

He was a necromancer. Ever since he was a child, even before he could truly be called living, when he was no different from a fawn unable to stand on its shaky legs, he had been drawn to the alluring, bittersweet embrace of death and the whimsical, fantasy world of magic.

Of course, he found this affinity for the afterlife and magic strange, as his mother was a baker and his father was a farmer. They lived in a small cottage on the edge of a village, a line of trees between them and the town, where which his humble beginnings were built. Magic was associated with noblemen and women, but necromancy was a crime to perform. Men and women who meddled with the forces of nature were deemed enemies of the balance and were hunted. So why was Dazai, a humble boy raised by a farmer and a baker, a magic wielder? Simple. He came from a long line of necromancers. A secret society.

The boy’s non-magical genius quickly had him sent to the capital to study, his parents were so proud. He quickly rose in society, enough where he was invited by the royal family—a direct invitation from the queen—to attend the very soirée he stepped into now.

He kept a pleasant smile as he mingled with men and women who reminded him of dogs—he hated dogs—and waited for whatever speech the royals planned that evening. What could it be about? No noble could tell.