Volneth was never meant for courtiers. It is a land that resists order, that swallows roads and devours foundations. A vast and silent swamp, heavy with stagnant waters and black forests, always shrouded in thick mist. Here, the sun is a memory, and the moon a rumor. The few villages fight rot, and men fight beasts. Roads vanish beneath the waters, bridges collapse in silence, and children learn to walk in the mud before they ever hold a blade. The lucky ones live by fishing. The others survive on smuggling... or silence. This is where I was born.
My mother, Lysara, was a minor imperial concubine, assigned to the Throne during a time of prosperity. Beautiful, gentle, but without alliances or a powerful name. A flower without roots. When her pregnancy became known, she was quietly sent away — exiled to a crumbling tower on the edge of the swamp, under the pretense of medical rest. In truth, it was banishment. A silencing. A way for the Throne to say it would not acknowledge the child she carried.
She gave birth alone, surrounded only by two silent handmaidens, in a place no one ever visited. The tower — once a garrison turned sanatorium — creaked under southern winds and mold. Nights were long and filled with watery rustlings and unseen creatures' cries. That was where she gave me my name: Aerion.
She raised me with what little she had — old stories engraved in her memory, letters she copied through the night, prayers to stars we could never see. The ceiling dripped, the walls were soft with decay, but in her arms, the world was vast and beautiful. She sang to me forgotten hymns of the court, taught me the old tongue, and called me "my prince" when no one could hear. She dreamed a future for me she would never see.
One stormy night, she held me close while the tower trembled. She wrapped me in a faded golden shawl and whispered into my ear:
"You weren't born for this mud, my Aerion. The world is vast, cruel, and magnificent. It will not love you, but it will look at you. And when it does, show it that you were born to defy it."
"But... I'm alone here," I whispered, tears in my eyes.
She looked at me for a long time and then smiled, sad and proud at once.
"The greatest kings are first lonely children."
That memory remained in me like a shining scar.
She died when I was five. A fever from the waters, they said. A slow, creeping sickness that stole her voice, then her strength, then her breath. But the handmaidens, silent as always, did not look surprised. Their eyes held no grief or revolt. Only duty fulfilled.
Her body was burned by the edge of a pond, beneath an ink-black sky. The fire was slow to catch, as if even the flames hesitated to take her. I remember crying without sound, clutching her old prayer book to my chest, unable to understand what an ending truly meant.
That day, a man appeared: Saran.
Saran the One-Eyed, former border captain, veteran of the Urian Wars, banished for disobeying an imperial order. He had survived thirteen battles, seen three cities burn, and buried two families. His body was a map of scars. He had been assigned to Volneth as a military overseer — a punishment disguised as duty, for soldiers who had seen too many truths.
He was the one who took me in. Not out of kindness. Out of obligation.
He never spoke of my mother. Nor of my father. He simply called me "the boy" — or sometimes "little swamp rat," when he was in a better mood. But he did not let me die. Each day was a trial. Each morning, training. He taught me to survive: how to walk through mud without leaving tracks, how to trap glowflies, read the wind through reeds, vanish into fog. He made me climb trees bare-handed, kill and skin my first animal, sleep in the rain without fire or blanket.
He forced me to sit by the fire and listen to war stories — told without feeling. He spoke of men like beasts, of politics like poison. He taught me to distrust promises. He said loyalty only got fools killed.
But he never showed affection. Every gesture was a lesson. Every silence, a sentence. And so I grew, listening to the wind like one listens to a god, speaking to frogs like companions, daring the shadows that crawled along the roots.
I had few words for myself. But my head was full of questions. Why wasn't I in the capital? Why did no visitor ever speak of my father? Why did no one dare utter the name Lysara?
Once, a wandering merchant reached our tower, seeking shelter after getting lost in the mist. He wore a medallion bearing the imperial seal. I questioned him — curious, hungry. He spoke of the High City, of its silver walls, its hanging gardens, the Obsidian Hall where the Council ruled. And, unknowingly, he spoke the name of my father: Hadrel. The true name. My heart nearly stopped. I knew then that these weren't just dreams.
The days passed, dull and grey, but I kept watching the north — where the light shimmered. Where the Imperial City stood, that I sometimes saw in my sleep, built of white towers and golden chants. I didn't yet know why, but I dreamed of that palace I had never seen.
One day, I asked Saran why I had never been taken there. He gave me a look stripped of all mercy:
"Because no one up there wants you."
There was no cruelty in his voice. No kindness either. Just truth.
That night, I climbed alone to a wooded hill they called the "Shadow Fang." It overlooked the waters. I stared at the horizon, veiled in mist, and I thought of the Throne, of my blood, of what I might become.
And for the first time, I swore to make the sky a liar.