Heroes they were called at first. How foolish were we when we first heard about them. They came to us from another world called Earth. We never found out much about it, except that even heroes, when they talked about it, would complain how horrible it was. How no one cared about them, how it was full of awful people that enjoyed tormenting them. If I believe one thing that heroes said, it was that Earth must be some kind of hell, because only some twisted place could create such people that would torture us so.

If you were wondering why we still call them heroes at all, it's to remind us of our hope and tragedy. So that every time we say it, a bitter taste would remain that we could enjoy as punishment for trusting them. At first, when they came, they were no different than us. If not for their weird clothes you wouldn't give them a second thought. What distinguished from the rest of us was how quickly they could improve at magic. That's why all four of them became mages. The amount of magical power they acquired in a short time was unbelievable. And it was not before long that they challenged the rule of the Demon King himself and were victorious. Everyone praised them. Compared them to angels, liberators, heroes. Mage-heroes. Nobody thought about the future because we were certain it was bright.

Let me say something about the Demon King. His rule was ruthless. He demanded absolute devotion, he would take almost everything we had for himself and punished severely any discontent. But in those difficult times, there were periods of peace. A time when Demon King's greed and malice was quenched, when we could live with relaxed shoulders and a hope to fight back. You never treasure those things until they are lost.

The mages, on the other hand, gave us nothing. Once they defeated the Demon King they took power for themselves. Carved up our continent into countries where each would preside and rule as all-powerful madmen. They experimented upon us, murdered us, tortured us. Our bodies were not our own but belonged to them. And they weren't satisfied. Even thought crime was severely punished. We weren't allowed to even think for ourselves but were made just puppets that shouldn't want or feel or have. Except what mages considered appropriate.

And so we lived day after day, in the twilight of our doom. Trying to hold on to what was left of our sanity. But stars are shifty and no one's burn forever. Just as fate played with heroes' arrival to our world, so it toyed with their eventual downfall. Their downfall by the hand of the Mageslayer.