Europe is in the midst of an age of significant changes. The new ideas which arose from the French Revolution are spreading fast in the neighbouring countries. War is imminent. The year is 1793.
However, an apocalyptical event is going to alter the course of History. In the future, nobody will forget this date: 3rd July, 1793. The people of all Europe leapt out of their beds with fear on their faces. Thunder roared in the dark, while the earth experienced intense vibrations. On the horizon, there appeared an enormous rent in the sky. The Rent in the Sky was open.
All of Europe suffered its consequences. Along the Mediterranean coast, both in Spain and in France, entire towns were lost, shaken and flooded by the furious waves of the sea. The earthquakes and tidal waves took the lives of thousands of people along the African coast.
The fleets sailing across the Mediterranean sank in a storm that lasted weeks. Thousands of people suffered the terror and the helplessness in what seemed like the end of the world. But if Europe was punished, Italy took the brunt. An enormous crevice, similar to the rent in the sky, divided the Italian peninsula in two. From the south of the Veneto down to Rome, everything was destroyed. Thousands perished when Florence and Rome disappeared. Very few people survived the Holocaust.
The Rent in the Sky began to pour a kind of luminescent mist. An unnatural mist, dense and bright, absorbed the earth. It was the essence of magic, magic at its purest.
Venice is on the northern edge of the crevice. An eerie mist fell upon the city, penetrating the ground, the canals and the lagoon. Some of its inhabitants, terrified, saw how their skin absorbed this mist and their lungs were filled with it.
However, after a few days everything went back to normal. The earthquakes became silent, the storms ceased and the sun shone again in a hot summer. Life went on. The Doge of the Republic, Ludovico Manin, saw an opportunity for Venice to recover its former glory. The rival city’s naval fleets had been destroyed, whereas its own was safe and sound in Venice’s port. If the Venetian docks reopened, the city would seize control of Mediterranean trade in no time. Venice would be glorious once again, the Rialto market would be Europe’s commercial centre again and the Serenissima would stop being the brothel it had become of late. This, however, wasn’t going to be easy. Venice had changed.
