You don't remember the war. But you will always remember the wave that ended it.
You faintly remember clutching tightly to a stuffed doll as you are awoken in the dead of night in the palace, huddled in darkness beside your mother as servants burst the door open into your room to rouse you from your dreams just in time to face a nightmare. They tell you both to dress yourself and flee while you still can. All across the gleaming city of Antium, people are holding their loved ones close or in a panic to move farther inland before it's too late. Away from the sea. That is all they tell you over and over again. You don't understand.
Away from the sea. Away from the sea. Like a silent prayer to the ethereal ancients they hope will save them.
"We're safe this far inland, your nanny tells you with a reassuring smile, away from the coast, but it wouldn't hurt to take extra precautions." But it won't matter. Behind her warm brown eyes you can see that she is lying to you. You see that she is deathly afraid. Trying and failng to lock away her own terror so as not to worry you. She is a kind old walrus who has seen emperors come and go whom you love more than all the world dearly, having played with her under the dining table many times with more toys than you can count. More toys than you deserve. Acting as your greatest caretaker the past year while your mother has not been herself, refusing to eat or even come out of her room. Yet despite the old woman's promises to the both of you that all will be well and decades of living on this earth, she couldn't be more wrong. She will not live beyond this day. So few will.
Your mother dresses you both in nightclothes, not wasting precious time you don't have on extravagance. She packs quickly, taking jewels and wealth, and anything she can to help start a new life. She may not have much to live for anymore. But she will live to ensure you do. Her only daughter. You're tired and groggy and still not understanding of everything around you that is happening. All this chaos. You ask question after question as you rub your weary eyes. Why are we awake? Why is everyone scared? But she can't waste time on an answer. Bored, you wind your favorite music box of two birds and watch as it plays its soft simple melody, arms folded atop a nightstand while the adults work. The last sliver of happiness as the world burns around you. The gentle song is soon drowned out by air raid sirens.
Your mother drags you by the arm in a final desperate dash for life itself across a grand hall to reach the shuttle in time or at least the bunker with more soldiers than you've ever seen before accompanying you both. As you sprint, still half dazed from being roused, you can see the familiar towering stained glass windows of past emperors staring down at you both. Towering, larger-than-life men who resemble your father.
Their eyes seem to follow and glare at you as your mother pulls you by the wrist. Their serious faces frighten you. But not as much as the loud noises do. You wish it would stop.
Suddenly, you are all knocked to your feet as an even louder sound like thunder rattles the world beneath you and sends cracks to seep throughout the white marble walls. It rattles your very bones. You hear the air raid sirens begin to blare even louder in the distance. You stare, confused and frightened, beyond the cold glass monarchs as they shake from the impact out across the vast icy city landscape, which pales in comparison to what is coming. Far away, a lone speck is dropped from a passing plane and is swallowed into the sea. Hardly anybody sees it.
The air raids go silent. There is no point any longer.
Beyond the harbor, the sea slowly rises.
For one impossible heartbeat, the sky itself is gone.
The wave rises higher and higher on the horizon. Until there is no horizon.
Nothing like it has ever been seen before on this planet.
Your mother and the soldiers rush to shield you with their bodies and wings but they don't reach you in time. The brief moment before you are cast in this final darkness, you just stare in confused awe at why this is happening. Why it had to happen. You watch frozen in place as the wall of water swallows your entire world and blankets it in darkness, before finally hitting its intended target. You feel. Scarred.
It all happens so fast, yet to you it seems eternity as all time freezes and your world crumbles around you. The wave is etched into your memory forever, and there it will remain forever still. You and your mother were both sent here for your own protection she tells you, but even here is not safe. She has realized this only too late when nothing can be done. Nowhere is safe in war.
You hear your mother scream your name for what she thinks is the last time as the water rushes in through the windows to engulf and food the palace halls you've played through a thousand times like a torrential dispassionate beast, filling every room, every bedchamber, every crevice it can reach as your muisc is carried out to sea still playing it's last song. What has taken decades to meticulously build is washed away like it was never there to begin with. One of the greatest cities in the world will fall today. It is destined. Thousands die for the crime of wanting something more than what they were given. The ceiling collapses in on itself as your maid, with her last breath, is crushed to death by a pillar beside you after pushing you out of the way, telling you to look away from the window. In one final cruel act, the sheer impact sends the broken stained glass shards of your family legacy to hurl through the air towards you like a thousand reflective knives. You can see your own fear staring back at you.
It is the last thing you ever see before your eyes are lost to you forever.