PROLOGUE
Monday Evening, 1 January 2024
Zverovia, Southern Wealden
It is a worrying time in Wealden. It is a worrying time to be a citizen here. Even Moreso is it a worrying time to work for the government. Which just so happens to be the duty forsaken upon myself.
You’re reading the first journal entry of me – Nikolai Pavlovich. Or, at least, that’s what I should call myself here… considering I’d lose everything were this to be uncovered and leaked and traced back to me somewhat.
There’s something so surreal about being an advisor to the cabinet office. Something so bizarre about working with such influential and important figures each and every working day of your life. I’ve also been to many places, seen the sights and wonders of my home country. Kormir Barrow in Zoryane, the glorious skyline of Zolnaya, the beautiful ports of Belkova – the lot.
To avoid myself getting sidetracked here, I’m not entirely sure why I’m beginning this journal. Quite possibly because I worry for the future. An election looms in just five months’ time. We could be about to bear witness to the biggest electoral wipeout in Wealdenite political history, and I’m going to be in the very dead centre of it all. And I want to go back to where it all went wrong. From when I first started, around just over three years ago now, in the days when Andrii Vasylyk has just won his re-election into office. It’s all been rather turbulent, since then. Ever since his death in 2021, we’ve been governed by a party corrupted by greed and blinded by an insatiable hunger for authority, and condition, which should be the very opposite of what it exists there to stand for; us.
In the last three years, over five of our elected politicians have disappeared without a trace. Vasylyk himself died under mysterious circumstances and the investigation looking into his death is still ongoing to this day. All this, and the world knows very little about it. In fact, the world may as know almost nothing about it. Everyone likes to believe that the “Great Republic of Wealden is the shiniest beacon of liberty on the planet.” A shining beacon of liberty hidden amongst the roaring high tides and rolling storm clouds of the Cerenerian continent; we’re not. We’re frightened, weakened, vulnerable, and very, very lost amongst those storm clouds which have seemed to envelop us even now as I write this introduction; the crackle of the heavy rain hitting my window and the growls of the distant thunderclaps couldn’t feel more appropriate, almost comforting in a way, that the world feels that it should perfectly represent the hidden fractures of our democracy in such grandeur.
It is a worrying time in Wealden. This is only the beginning.