The first memory I can recall wasn't that of my mother's warm embrace, but of the sun's searing rays that pierced through the atmosphere and traveled down, reflecting onto my forehead and burning my exposed skin and even my eyelids before I could open them.
I don't remember who I was before that incident, only that I was young, maybe about three years old, alone and adrift in a shabby wooden canoe, the canoe itself wasn't whole, while my only friend was this worn-out white fleece, which was stained yellow. One can assume it was possibly passed down through generations.
The next thing I remember was the brutal impact of a force so intense and frightening that it felt as if it could shake the very foundation of a great hall bursting to the brim full of a hundred men and women combined.
I washed ashore under a white sky. The tide receded, nothing but seaweed and bones were what remained along the coast. The seagulls shrieked as shadows moving above me- and figures, cloaked in red and bronze, sword and spears leveled.
"Gods… thats a child in there"
"Is it alive?"
"Tough one aint it?"
I had grasped a remnant of the canoe driftwood, which couldn't have been any bigger than my height. The stick was rough in my small pudgy hands, the splinters from the canoe piercing my tender palms, but I couldn't let go. A man had approached me, he was on a pale sweating horse. But he wasn't dressed like everyone else. His armor gleamed black and gold, sunlit like molten iron. He grunted but without moving an inch, and then without hesitating, he dismounted slowly from his saddle and horse.
"This lad has spirit," he said. His voice was deep although decisive.
This man knelt before me, and looked into my face as if he were studying my eyes-not with pity, with calculation. Something in my body commanded me to take defiance- something even beyond my comprehension at the time. My body filled with a surge of adrenaline as I struck the wood upon the nearest person to me, my strike landing directly against a man's armored leg.
The Wood clanged against the Iron, which then reverberated throughout our surroundings and in the air, suddenly I felt the gaze of every two dozen men in the surrounding area. For a moment, there was silence. The atmosphere felt intense, too much for even a toddler to feel. And then suddenly, as if the hairs on my neck stood up I heard the unmistakable sound of steel being unsheathed, sharp, and lethal. The Knight's swords glistened in the brutal sunlight, their eyes pointed directly at me and the king's iron foot.
However, before fear could possess my body and take a strict hold on me, a sudden thunderous voice Roared through the tension like a razor-sharp obsidian blade. "Enough!", The command in his sudden tone was enough to freeze everyone within a 10-mile radius. The man who had spoken had taken a step towards me, his eyes interlocking with mine, his presence overwhelming. He was Large, Tall, and imposing, he had regal armor which included the Sanguinarian sigil of Jörmungandr, the world serpent. It felt as if he was studying me not with anger, but with curiosity. After a long pause, he spoke,
" This one" , his lips curling into a faint smile,"Let the courts see. I'll raise this boy. Not as a peasant. And not as a bastard. But as blood," He looked into my eyes once more, "This boy struck royalty! That means he belongs to it now."
High above, on a wind-warped cliff, a cloaked figure stood watching his face hidden in a hood, a copper-bound journal held in gloved hands. One eye glinted gold. The other, silver. Then he turned, and vanished down the ridge. Archivist Reos. Forgotten by most, feared by few. He recorded every drift born child rumored to carry the old blood of the Isles. I would not learn his name until years later.
The King's smile stuck with him as he crouched to my level, mirroring my height, his eyes then locked with mine but this time with a stranger's intensity. For a moment it seemed as if the world had drifted away, and as if only his piercing gaze existed. How wrong could I have been? Then without hesitation the man spoke again, this time however with a softer but not any less commanding tone, " Bring Him," He had ordered the guards while pointing at me. The men looked at each other hesitating, " You heard me, this child is one special castaway."
I didn't resist as the guards lifted me from the wreckage, a soldier retrieved the worn out fleece I had been clutching.
"Its just some damn old rags," he muttered.
"Wait," another soldier said. "There's something stitched inside it…"
He flipped the fabric.
A symbol was faintly embroidered onto the fleece- the lining was almost faded as a threadbare ash. A white fang piercing through a broken ring.
"I've seen this mark before," the second soldier said under his breath. "That was the sigil of… Valis. House Vanis. Weren't they wiped out in the shattering?"
"Shut your mouth," snapped the first soldier, "Unless you want your tongue nailed to the irongate."
The man crushed the fleece into a satchel.
"Burn all the records from this region!," the king commanded casually, "we don't want anyone making claims."
And from the canoe in which I once resided, my stick still glued onto the palm of my hand. The King himself had guarded and protected me while he carried me back to a carriage, setting me beside him securely. As we galloped and rode further I dropped down and sat on the floor of the carriage, wrapped in a borrowed cloth. The wind bit my skin. And the fleece laid across my lap like a puzzle.
I watched the soldiers, memorized the way their backs stayed stiff on their horses, even while being in the sun. One soldier wore a shoulder clasp with that same fang-and-ring insignia, which was fetched fainty into his Iron.
He caught me staring.
" My grandfather fought under that banner," he muttered. "But that was before they burned down the old houses."
"Shut up." his comrade behind him hissed.
"That house has been dead for years. Let them rot."
After a short moment of silence, The Man in the grand armor said, " I will do the honors of naming you my boy." His voice seemed to grow heavier, foreboding almost.
As the gates of the capital opened with fanfare and praise. A crowd had already seemed to form. Nobles, guards, clergy, servants, slums men, and slaves. All staring at the King, who dismounted the carriage and help me aloft like a prize.
"This is the boy who struck me!" he said.
"And he will strike again. For us!"
In the crowd stood a girl-dark Black hair that resembled coal, deep dark eyes. She couldn't be much older than ten years old. She watched in perfect silence. I didn't know it then, but she was never a court child. She was a memory waiting to return.
And a man in blue and silver learned from a Cal Rheon diplomats carriage, unimpressed with this sudden arrival. He would later push for war over human rights, and this man was the first time we ever laid eyes. And it wasn't the last.
The king announced " Lucian Draconis, From this day onward You will be my son and bear my name."
I didn't understand the weight of his words at the time. Little did I know that the name he gave me would eventually curse me instead of being a "gift".
Years Later I would uncover the truth. The king's fascination with me was no coincidence. I wasn't some random child abducted from a river- I was his vessel.
I didn't know at the time but the day I had struck him he saw more than just juvenile defiance, he saw potential in me. And when he glared into my eyes he recognized something. My features were faint echoes of someone he once knew-Someone he had betrayed many years ago.
Although I didn't recognize it till much later I was a reminder of his past sins, I was a reminder he chose to keep close to his heart not out of love, but for control. The Name "Draconis" came with absolute power, yes I can't argue that, but it also came with a heavy burden.
In the following years to come, I will never forget that power is not given-- but it is taken away from those whose hands wield it corruptly, and to the man who made me his son was the catalyst of much of the suffering I would one day endure and one day seek to end…
After the ceremony I was escorted into my own chambers, the room was grand and large and bone chillingly cold. The walls were Gilded in golden vines and iron flowers. The mattress was too soft. The window was too high. A woman sat beside my bed. Older. Her hands bore old burn scars. And she introduced herself to me softly.
"Maelis. Call me just Maelis."
…
"You don't have to speak, child. You already said more than most ever do."
…
"If anyone asks child… you never saw me"
…
Before she left, I noticed she tucked something beneath the fleece- a copper pendant engraved with two letters : M.V.
Maelis would vanish days before the census. And her room cleared out in the night.
Later, when I examined the fleece again, I noticed a stitch on the inner lining had been loosened. I pulled it back and found a folded scrap of parchment paper.
The writing was faint, and was brown as if soaked in age:
"When the sea returns you, the iron heart must never forget its blood. And when the skies turn red, may the iron forge the path"
I didn't know what it meant. But I folded it and hid it beneath my bed.
That night, I dreamed a Red Sea .