Chapter Text
Everyone remembers the Age of Heroes. It's beginning, full of glory and promise, and its end, marked by bitterness and tragedy. Kings and queens from the ocean were crowned and dethroned, dark knights rose and fell, and goddesses that brought the dawn of a new era had their twilight.
A time of miracles was brought to an end by betrayal. The ones that were supposed to inspire bravery turned into symbols of terror and rage; the mighty were defeated, and when they were vanquished hope went the way that they did as well.
The old alliances were shattered and friendships once strong became but ash. Heroism now is an old-fashioned idea that is shrugged at or looked down upon with cynicism. The most renowned teams are those sponsored by governments or corporations, that may act as they like as long as it doesn't go against the interests of their superiors. As a result there are places they're not allowed to go and people they are not allowed to help. The adults have accepted this––no one can solve all the problems in the world and better to have them in control than what happened before, the adults say to their children. Would you rather they run around unsupervised doing whatever they want, they ask and before the children can come up with an answer they say that this way there is order and safety for everyone. But the children ask this amongst themselves: what about the ones the heroes don't stay to help with? If they are protectors, why do they seem more interested in neutralizing a target than in protecting the people around them?
To this questions the adults don't have an answer and they think they make the young ones a favor by teaching them not to hope. So the children take sight to their imagination and start to dream of a world that was dreamt of generations before they were born. A world that was thought to be over, but was only put aside by those who can't remember more than the failures of these times after being let down so many times. The Lanterns are shining again, the Old Mystic Ways have woken up and a new promise of hope has come from the stars. All of this is true because the children are right and the adults are wrong. Because they forgot how to hope while they are just starting.
The Age of Heroes has been absent and it is making a comeback--and it has brought some of its very best back with it.