Broken Alliances – Elves, Exile & the Magic That Wasn’t Allowed
By Robert Stanek
If you read enough fantasy, you start to notice a pattern:
- Elves are wise, noble, and good.
- Magic is beautiful and triumphant.
- Alliances between races are forged with handshakes and prophecy.
But when I created Ruin Mist, I didn’t want those rules.
I wanted truth.
I wanted consequences.
So I wrote a world where elves are exiles.
Where magic is outlawed.
And where the old alliances have not just failed—they’ve rotted from the inside.
This wasn’t about being edgy. It was about being honest.
Because what happens when a magical world loses faith in its magic?
What happens when peace becomes memory?
What happens when power is buried because truth is too dangerous?
That’s the heart of Ruin Mist.
The Elves Weren’t Just Elegant—they Were Enemies
In most fantasy stories, elves are a guiding light—distant but benevolent, wiser than humans, more in touch with nature and the divine.
In Ruin Mist, elves and humans were once allies—yes. But that alliance broke. Not just from distance or time, but from betrayal.
Long ago, an Elf King named Dnyarr turned against mankind, and the wars that followed ended the age of unity. Elves retreated into exile. Humans rewrote history to erase them. Both sides blamed the other. Neither forgot.
By the time our story begins, humans fear elves. Elves distrust humans.
And when the two meet again?
It’s not prophecy—it’s tension. It’s trauma.
This gave Ruin Mist something fantasy often avoids: a living past.
One that bleeds into the present, shaping every conflict and choice.
Seth, a guardian raised among the Red Elves, carries that weight. He’s not just navigating court intrigue—he’s walking a knife’s edge between hatred, history, and the hope that maybe it doesn’t have to end this way.
Books Are Banned. Magic Is a Crime.
In Ruin Mist, magic isn’t a gift—it’s a liability.
Generations ago, kings across the realms outlawed all magic and magical creatures. Not out of ignorance, but out of fear. Fear of power. Fear of what magic couldn’t be controlled to do. Fear of being replaced.
So they declared a purge.
- Wizards? Outlaws.
- Artifacts? Destroyed.
- Books? Burned.
- History? Rewritten.
By the time Vilmos is born, magic isn’t whispered about with awe. It’s whispered about with terror.
"A boy with power is a threat—even if he’s only dreaming."
This was personal to me. Because I’ve known what it’s like to live in a world where difference equals danger. Where knowledge is controlled. Where truth must be hidden to survive.
Ruin Mist made that literal: Magic isn’t dead. It’s buried.
And when it rises again, it brings the past with it—angry, fractured, and full of pain.
The Priestess. The Wizard. The Watchers in the Dark.
Even those who remember the old ways are changed by exile.
- Xith, a wizard who moves like a ghost, hides even from those he tries to help. He knows the cost of being seen.
- Midori, once a princess, now a priestess, fled the human world to survive—but carries its scars.
- The Twelve Clans, remnants of an ancient elven order, linger in secret, debating whether the world is worth saving at all.
None of them are sure what’s left to protect.
And that makes them dangerous.
When the return of ancient power forces their hands, it’s not a triumph. It’s a reckoning.
This isn’t a chosen-one fantasy.
It’s a world slowly remembering what it was told to forget.
And that, for me, is the most terrifying magic of all.
The Power of Suppressed Lore
Here’s something I’ve never said publicly:
When I first wrote these ideas into Ruin Mist, some publishers told me to remove them.
- They said readers “don’t want dark elves.”
- They said “no one wants a world where magic is criminal.”
- They said “books about fear and exile won’t sell.”
But I knew they were wrong.
Because exile is real.
Erasure is real.
And stories that face those truths don’t just entertain—they liberate.
So I kept the elves exiled.
I kept the magic feared.
I kept the world broken—and let the characters decide if it could be healed.
This Is Why They Tried to Silence the Story
Ruin Mist wasn’t comfortable.
It didn’t obey the tropes.
It looked at a fantasy genre that had grown too clean, too noble, too nostalgic—and it asked:
- What if the world is messier than that?
- What if the good guys burned the books?
- What if the truth hurts?
Some people didn’t want those questions.
So they attacked the story. Then they attacked me.
But readers?
Readers understood.
This Is the Magic They Tried to Bury
The real magic in Ruin Mist isn’t in spells or scrolls.
- It’s in Adrina speaking when she’s told to stay silent.
- It’s in Seth questioning everything he was raised to defend.
- It’s in Vilmos dreaming of something better—even when the world tells him to be afraid of himself.
- It’s in you, dear reader, refusing to forget what this story gave you.