The Pirate of Everlasting Flowers

Prologue

In the Western Valleys, there lived a servant to a powerful mage clan.

Her name was Wulan.

She was a competent servant, enough to gain the trust of the clan head. Interestingly, she was also a prodigy in magic. Her skills were said to surpass the young mistress, the heir of the Shin Clan, a renown mage household.

The clan nurtured her as one of their own disciples, hoping to polish her into a potential clan leader.

Unfortunately, she committed a taboo.

Wulan practiced the forbidden sea magic.

And the sea is evil.

Well, in truth, the sea is just a sea.

But, spirits of the sea are known to be vicious and wicked. It is believed that the caster of sea magic will have misfortune befall them and the people around them.

The servant had defiled the Shin Clan's honorable standing.

Then, she betrayed her own master by taking his life—an act that severed her ties with the household.

Leaving the Valleys, the servant summoned evil spirits of the sea by offering her own body, devoting herself to granting the wishes of the dead—of vengeance and resentment.

She earned a name of her own.

She was known as the sea witch.

That name alone struck fear into all mages and commoners across the lands, more so to all seafarers.

Ever since she ruled over the seas, countless mages and seafarers have met their end. Often, they simply disappeared into the sea without any indication of whether it was the witch's doing or a natural disaster.

Of course, it didn't matter what the actual cause was.

Because it was the sea witch.

It was her doing.

There was no one else, nothing else that could have dragged down all those ships to the ocean's depths.

The storm? they had a mage onboard! They could have pulled through somehow.

Sea creatures? Didn't you know they are all under the command of the witch?

And so, the fear of the sea witch grew as tales and rumors spread. People became afraid to enter the waters.

Sea routes were gradually abandoned by merchants and sailors. Mage clans and scholars hesitated to travel and reach their neighboring lands.

The impact was vast in such a short amount of time. The presence of the sea witch managed to take hold of the magic lands.

Mages from all five lands gritted their teeth due to the feeling of powerlessness against the sea witch. The witch that was once a servant. How long were they going to let her terrorize the sea?

It was an even harder blow to the leading clan of the West Valleys, the Shin Household.

Filled with grief and vengeance, the young mistress put an end to the sea witch. It happened a year after the witch's reign over the sea.

The attack was led by a powerful mage of a different clan from the East. He commanded a grand fleet of over five thousand mages to take the witch down.

The death of the sea witch ended the calamities suffered by seafarers, but it didn't end the chaos.

Pirates and rogues across the magic lands started to practice sea magic, following the steps of the sea witch.

New ways to draw power from spirits of the sea were invented for various purposes, regardless of good and evil.

The leading clans desperately tried to control these magic users. They needed a new figure, someone to lead the magic lands towards the right path.

A deity perhaps.

And there was a sliver of hope.

There was a legend. An age-old belief that a mage could ascend to godhood by eating the seven everlasting flowers, each of which blooms every seven hundred years.

The magic lands await the blooming of the flowers.

Those who have inherited the flowers from their ancestors may partake in the sacred ritual. Others may gather to trade and decide who shall be chosen as the new deity.

A new legend, once that will be a savior against evil.