Volume 4: Nuisance of Fate
Side Story 3 : The Eye of the Omen (Ren's Backstory)
The Curse of the Chief's Son
In the Southern Nomad Tribes, the eyes of the Chief are meant to see the horizon, the herd, and the glory of the ancestors. But when Ren was born to the Great Chief, his eyes were not clear. They were a shifting, unsettling amber that pulsed with a rhythmic light.
The Elders didn't see a hunter. They saw a Death-Mark.
"These eyes do not see the life of the plains," the High Shaman whispered, recoiling from the infant. "They see the friction of mana. They see the fraying of the soul. This child is a bad omen—he will witness ten thousand deaths, and he will die before he sees his twentieth winter. He is a hole in the tribe's future."
To protect the "purity" of the succession, the Chief did the unthinkable. He disowned his firstborn. Ren was stripped of his lineage and left at the "Grey Edge"—the jagged border where the plains meet the volcanic wastes.
Ren didn't die. He was found by Volcan, a massive, soot-stained Orc who lived in a cave of obsidian. Volcan wasn't like the mindless raiders of the stories; he was a silent, contemplative master of the hunt who had been exiled from his own war-band for refusing to kill non-combatants.
Volcan saw the boy's amber eyes and didn't flinch.
"The world is too bright for you, little one," Volcan grunted, his voice like grinding stones. He forged a set of thin, obsidian-glass lenses for the boy to filter the mana-glare. "Now. Don't look at the beast. Look at the leak."
Under Volcan's brutal tutelage, Ren learned a style of archery that no human or elf could replicate. He didn't aim at the heart; he aimed at the point where a creature's mana was weakest. Volcan taught him to hunt alone, to move like the smoke from the volcanoes, and to wait for the single moment when fate turned its back.
"You see death, boy," Volcan said, handing Ren a bow carved from the rib of a mountain drake. "So be the one who decides when it arrives."
Years later, after Volcan mysteriously vanished into the deeper wastes (leaving behind a trail that Ren would spend a lifetime following), Ren wandered north until he found a silver-haired half-elf in a tavern who didn't care about omens.
many years lter after joining the Asher Hawks. They got save by a mysterious boy Named Rowan.(Rolien)
The day Rowan (Rolien) stood over that Earth-Drake in the Iron-Leaf Forest, Ren was the only one who didn't look away.
While Tessa was shocked by the power and Brag was impressed by the grit, Ren was staring through his obsidian lenses, his breath hitching.
"I see death everywhere," Ren thought, his fingers twitching on his bowstring. "I see the mana leaking from Tessa, the chaotic fire in Solis, the trembling light in Pete. Everything in this world is burning out."
But when he looked at Rowan, his eyes finally stopped hurting.
Rowan had no mana friction. No leak. No light. He was a perfect, silent void in a world of blinding noise. To Ren's omen-cursed eyes, the "Magicless" boy was the only thing that looked like peace.
"Tessa," Ren whispered, his voice steady for the first time in weeks. "Recruit him. If I'm destined to see ten thousand deaths... I want to be standing behind the one man who doesn't have a soul for the world to burn."
To be continued..