Rain hammers the cobblestones of Magnolia Town as a girl with a paintbrush wedged behind her ear kicks open the door of a guildhall that smells of wet wool and old beer. Mavis Vermillion is thirteen years old, barefoot, and carrying nothing but a grimoire she taught herself to read and a grudge the size of the Alvarez Empire. The treasure-hunting guild Blue Skull seized her island, torched the Red Lizard guildhall, and left her with nothing except a debt of tears she intends to collect with interest. She demands the men of the Magnolia bar take her seriously. They laugh. So she writes a letter to the one wizard on the continent whose name makes even treasure hunters lock their doors: Warrod Sequen.

What follows is not a fairy tale; it is the bloody, stubborn birth of the Fairy Tail guild. Yuri Dreyar forges his lightning into a weapon. Precht wields the black arts before they calcify into something darker. Warrod watches trees walk. And Mavis, a child who has never cast a formal spell in her life, deploys an illusion so vast and layered that the Blue Skull fleet cannot distinguish ocean from sky. The Tenrou Jade is waiting. Zeref himself is waiting. The curse that will one day freeze Mavis in time is already coiling around her ankles. But before any of that, a small barefoot girl must convince a handful of misfits that a guild is not a collection of swords — it is a promise. And promises are worth burning a fleet to the ground for.

Also known as: Fairy Tail Zerø, フェアリーテイル ゼロ, Fearī Teiru Zero.