Die Rückkehr des weißen Kaninchens
(um die Geschichte nicht zu verfälschen, haben wir sie in der Originalfassung in Englisch gelassen)

1. THEQueenOfSheba
 

THE FALL OF VELDAN: THE WARLOCK’S STORY
Long before he became the terror of the rabbit realm — before the iron pumpkins and the undead — he was simply Veldan.
Veldan had once been the most promising mage in the capital's academy. A boy born under a rare celestial alignment, his affinity for magic was unrivaled. Teachers whispered that he might even eclipse the elders. While others struggled to master elemental incantations, Veldan could summon fire and bend water before his voice had fully broken. He even levitated the giant goldfish causing quite a stir! But unlike the others, Veldan didn’t seek power for the sake of power. He was driven by a desire to protect.
You see, Veldan had grown up on the outskirts, near the Darkwoods — the very border between the realm of light and the creeping shadows. His mother, a herbalist, had once saved the life of the elder’s child during a plague, the child's mother had wept and sent them cherries every year in thanks. However when the shadows threatened the borders, the same elder denied them refuge behind the city's walls. That night, shadow beasts razed the village. Veldan alone survived, buried beneath a collapsed root cellar, clutching his mother’s burnt satchel.
After that, he had one purpose: create magic powerful enough to ensure no one would be left defenseless ever again.

Years passed, and Veldan’s power grew exponentially. But with power came fear. The elder — once his mentor — began to keep his distance. Whispers of his experiments reached the High Council: spells that borrowed from both life and death, theories involving soulbinding, spirit echo, and worst of all… resurrection.
But Veldan didn’t care for their approval anymore. He had begun hearing something in his dreams — a voice, distant but warm. It promised him understanding, knowledge beyond the limits the council feared to cross. It claimed to be a guardian of balance, forgotten by time.
The voice led him to the Valewell, an ancient, sealed shrine said to house forbidden relics. There, Veldan discovered a shattered mirror infused with necromantic energy — and from that moment, something inside him shifted.
He didn’t just want to protect anymore.

He wanted justice.

Veldan disappeared for years. Many believed he was dead, devoured by his own ambition. But those in the far regions began to whisper of a new ruler rising — a Pumpkin King, who commanded legions of cursed warriors. Behind his smiling iron mask, no one recognized the boy once called a prodigy.
He began to resurrect the fallen, binding them to his cause. But not out of malice — or so he believed. In his mind, he was balancing the scales. The elders had turned their backs on him and others like him. He would raise an army of the forgotten, the betrayed, the discarded. His pumpkin-headed soldiers? Once volunteers, farmers, or rebels who had fallen and been returned with purpose.
Veldan no longer sought peace. He sought balance by force.

Deep down, part of Veldan still remembered the boy who wanted to save the world. It was visible in the hesitation before he unleashed his final spell, in the way he lingered in the forest outside the capital rather than destroying it outright.
When the elder’s mage challenged him, it wasn’t just power versus power — it was belief versus belief. Veldan almost won. His magic was stronger, older, more dangerous.
But when he saw the warriors and this CrackerJack, a complete stranger to the world, fighting not for power or revenge, but for each other, something in him cracked. The spirit of the young boy from the outskirts resurfaced… just long enough for hesitation.
And that’s all it took.

EPILOGUE: THE UNSEEN PAGE
There’s a rumour — barely a whisper — that before the mage passed, he retrieved a small scrap of parchment from Veldan’s cloak. A letter, never sent:
"If you find this, know I only wanted to save them. All of them. But the more I tried, the more I lost. If there is still hope, bury me beneath the Valewell, where the stars still remember me."
The elder burned his name from their records. But in the quiet corners of the library, in one of the hidden sections you never quite reached…
a notebook waits, glowing faintly under the silver moonlight.
And in it, the real story begins again.

Die magische Lampe

1. Shenevra
 

3. Gothika