4. A Mortal on the Surface

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Young Gret was the son of an ordinary farmer. He was one of the simplest common folk in this vast land. His family worried every day about having enough to eat. In his memories, the village called Rollingstone had never known peace—goblins and kobolds would frequently rise from the wilderness to pillage the village. No one protected them, so the villagers had to take up arms to fight these ugly, diminutive creatures. More fearsome than goblins were the orcs, towering two meters tall, immensely strong, covered in bulging muscles and thick hair. Every time orcs attacked, people died. Gret’s uncle had fallen to the orcs’ hands. The battles against goblins and orcs were the most “fantastical and epic” things Gret had ever witnessed. As for the tales of wizards and epic heroes, to Gret they were just stories told by the bards in the tavern.

One day, a bard in the tavern narrated a tale in which the protagonist wielded wondrous magic, able to summon clouds and lightning with a mere incantation. Five-year-old Gret listened in awe and asked, “Mother, could I possibly learn magic?”

“Oh, Gret, don’t even think about it. Those are just drunken poets’ tall tales, nothing more,” his mother scolded. “Those wizard lords live in the floating city in the sky. You’d better pray never to see them in your lifetime.”

“Why, Mother?” Gret’s eyes widened with curiosity.

“In their eyes, we ordinary folk who don’t know magic are no better than insects on the ground! If they ever come to the surface world, they’d kill you without a second thought!” His mother pointed to a faint shadow in the sky and told Gret that was the Sky City—the home of the wizard lords.

Legend had it that once every year or so, a group of these wizard lords would randomly select a village and hunt its people like prey in a cruel game. From then on, every night, his mother would scare Gret and his sister with the warning, “If you don’t sleep soon, the wizard lords from the sky will come and get you.”

As Gret grew older, several survivors of these hunts came to their village. They recounted in terror how their villages had been destroyed: wizards riding horses, driving the powerless peasants into the wilderness, watching them flee, then unleashing fire and lightning to slaughter them for sport. Some crueler wizards would transform children into rabbits or deer, cook them into delicacies, and force the parents to eat their own offspring.

Gret and his sister grew up listening to these grim stories. Many villagers, including Gret’s family, secretly dug hidden cellars or devised escape routes in case their village was ever chosen for the wizard lords’ hunting grounds. In Gret’s mind, these wizard lords were far more terrifying than the brute orcs and goblins.

“Who exactly are these wizard lords? Are they stronger and more monstrous than orcs?” Gret once asked an old woman who had survived one of the hunts.

“No, no,” she said, “They are humans, just like us, but they wear more splendid clothes and have paler skin.”

“Wizard lords are humans too?” Gret felt a shiver of fear.

That night, puzzled, he asked his mother, “I’ve heard that the wizard lords in the sky are human like us. Is it possible for us to go to that floating city and become wizard lords ourselves?”

“My dear child, it’s possible, but exceedingly rare,” his mother replied with a bitter smile. “Legend says that when the wizard elders come down to the surface, if they find a handsome woman or man they fancy, they will choose them as a spouse or servant and take them to the sky kingdom. But such luck is so rare, you must never expect it to happen to you.”

That night, after hearing his mother’s words, Gret lay restless in bed. “So ordinary people like us have a chance to go to that sky kingdom. Could we even learn magic and become wizard lords?”

He drifted into a dream.

In his dream, a noble lady wizard took a liking to him and brought him to the sky kingdom.

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In the sky kingdom, everything was dreamy and blissful—no hard labor, no endless battles against goblins and towering orcs, no sweating under the scorching sun. Magic could conjure delicious food at will.

In that dream realm, young Gret learned magic.

He truly mastered the wondrous spells that existed only in the bards’ tales and in the mouths of survivors.

Gret became a new wizard lord.

Yet he never forgot where he came from.

Now blessed with powerful magic, he felt a responsibility to change something.

Just as Gret pondered what he should do, he awoke.

The sun rose as usual.

He had to return to the fields.

“So it was only a dream,” Gret thought with a hint of disappointment, as if he had fallen from heaven to hell.

The enchanting spells he had learned in the dream were all gone.

He stepped outside his house, deep in thought.

Suddenly, he heard terrified shouts.

“Quick, hide! Quick, hide!”

“The Sky City has descended! The wizard lords from above are coming!”

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