Young Writers Society

Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening/Night(whichever one it is in your part of the world),

Hi! I'm Knight Hardy here on a mission to ensure that all works on YWS has at least two reviews. You will probably never see this but....Imma do this anyway.

First Impression: This is a really nice story and I have to say I would have read any book that came after it. Even if that's not a thing this would make for some awesome lore. Definitely felt like the sort thing that we all wish we saw in our history textbooks but will never see in a history textbook.

Anyway let's get right to it,

Thousands and thousands of years ago, when humanity was young, magic was discovered. It started small, a way to quickly light a torch or to cook a slab of meat. But in this dark age, people saw magic as a beacon of light, and they flocked to it. Over the years, magic grew from a way to accomplish mundane tasks to something much more. It became a cure. It became a creator. It became a teacher.

When something as powerful as magic is found, it is inevitable that, no matter how much good it can do, evil men will use it for evil. And so it was. The good, the pure, the kind used it as a way to help people, but the evil, the greedy, the vindictive used it to enforce their will. At first, the good tried to resist… But their magic had not been developed for battle, and soon they realised how futile their struggle was. A few fought and died, but most fled. Evil reigned.

The changes happened slowly. At first, the only difference between them and normal people was the strange taint in their eyes. A glimmering but subtle movement, like a dim fire. Eventually, however, they lost their humanity. As the magic became an even bigger and bigger part of them, it soon dwarfed all their other parts. Very soon, they were no longer human. They were grotesques, with metallic skin and burning hatred in their eyes. Their appearance reflected their deepest desires and most depraved fantasies.

Magic, now viewed as the greatest of evils, fell out of practice. People became fearful of mages, dubbing them witches and heretics. They became weary of those with the familiar dim flame in their eyes. They tied them to wooden stakes and they burned them, as they had burned the last mages who had resisted.

Then the age of reason came. As the world was submerged in new revolutions, disgruntled peasants overthrowing their kings and queens, people became jaded and cynical. They rejected the existence of magic, and the practice lay forgotten for centuries.

Until now.

Wow, I am seriously blown away by this. It was fantastic, but it felt more like the prologue of a book that a short story. The "Until now." part seemed to imply that you would write more about how magic was coming back into the world. What brought it back after the Age of Reason? Was it someone specific, or a whole group of people? Did it come back all at once, or did it slowly creep up onto people? i would love to know the answers! if you wanted to continue, you could write a series of shorts that all tie into the others, explain how magic coming back into people's lives affected different people, from the wealthy to the poor, the powerful, to the insignificant. I think you have an amazing idea and I would love to see you build on it.