The sea had almost broken them.
The crew was gaunt, sun-blackened, and silent. Every breath of wind carried the stench of salt, rot, and despair. The water barrels were nearly empty. Four sailors had died in the last nine days alone.
And then, at dawn, the lookout croaked a single word from the crow's nest.
"Land!"
Captain Ander Alemras—his hands cracked, his lips peeling—stumbled to the prow, eyes searching the mist. There it was.
Dark hills, cloaked in forest. A long crescent of white sand. A river mouth spilling slow silver into the sea.
He grinned—slow and disbelieving—and whispered hoarsely, "I told them. I told them it was real."
When their boots touched shore, several men dropped to their knees, kissing the earth. One man wept openly. Another climbed a tree just to touch something living.
The birds overhead screamed like spirits. They drank from the river greedily and wandered inland through palm groves and tall grass. The air was thick with heat and the scent of strange fruit.
Someone cracked open a heavy green pod from a low tree. Its flesh was sweet, seedy, and foreign—but the men ate it anyway, laughing. Another found a grove of thin-stalked plants bearing orange bulbs. A third caught a lizard and roasted it over a fire.
For a short while, they celebrated.
"Mark this day," the captain said. "We've found it."
The others murmured their awe, their relief, their hunger for more.
That was when the first arrow struck.
A thwip of silence—and then one of the crew collapsed, a shaft buried in his throat. Another struck a crate. A third hit a man in the back, dropping him mid-step.
Panic.
Shouts. Running. The crew fled for the boats, dragging the wounded, leaving supplies behind. Shadows moved in the treeline—barely glimpsed, never clear.
As the longboat shoved off, the captain stood on the wet sand a moment longer. His arm bled from a fresh cut, but his eyes blazed—not with fear, but fire.
He raised a clenched fist toward the trees.
"I will return," he rasped. "This is only the beginning."
The tide carried them out, and the
island vanished behind the mist once more.
-------
Far above the valley, where the stars touched snow and silence, the Wisest One awoke.
His eyes opened without reason, without sound. His breath caught, his body still. The sky beyond the carved wooden shutters was beginning to pale, and the air carried the edge of dawn's cold.
Around him, the circular stone chamber was quiet. Twelve of his disciples lay curled beneath woolen blankets on reed mats, their breathing soft, undisturbed.
But the Wisest One did not lie back down.
He sat up slowly, the joints of his eighty-summers-old frame creaking like old wood. He swung his legs over the side of his bedding and stared at the pale sky.
A whisper escaped his lips, meant for no one.
"It comes."
His voice was dry, hoarse as sand on stone.
He stood, slowly but surely, and moved across the chamber. At a niche near the far wall, he knelt and gathered a few items into a cloth satchel—dried fruit, flint, herbs, an oilskin scroll.
Then he slipped outside, wrapping a faded cloak around his shoulders. The wind at this hour bit sharp, but he did not flinch. The mule stood tethered beneath a pine tree near the ledge, its breath steaming in the cold.
He approached it with quiet hands, unfastened its reins, and began to pack the satchel onto its back.
Behind him, a soft rustling.
One of the younger disciples, a boy barely in his twelfth summer, had stirred. He padded across the stone floor barefoot, rubbing sleep from his eyes.
"Oh, Wisest One, what has happened? Where are you going?"
The old man did not pause in his motions. He tightened the last knot on the mule's pack, then turned and looked at the boy.
His eyes—clouded with age, yet clear with purpose—rested gently on the child's face.
"It comes. From the west."
He said the words softly, but the wind seemed to carry them farther than sound should travel.
"They must be warned. He must be warned"
And with that, he took the mule's reins in his hand and began the long descent down the mountain path, each step steady and deliberate. The first light of morning kissed the horizon behind him.
The boy stood watching, barefoot in the frost, until the cloak of the Wisest One vanished behind a curve of stone and snow.
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The king paced the torchlit corridor outside the birthing chamber, his boots echoing softly against stone. The air was heavy with incense, sweat, and the sound of muffled groans from within.
It had been two hours since the midwives had ushered the queen inside. Two hours of waiting. Hoping.
He clenched and unclenched his hands. The high priest's words still rang in his ears—spoken months ago in the sacred hall beneath flickering oil lamps:
"Your wife will bear a son who shall rise like the sun, my king. He shall lift your crown higher than ever before."
He had gifted the priest gold enough to weigh down a caravan.
His other queen had borne him a daughter the year before. But tonight, he had been promised a son.
Then—a cry pierced the air.
Sharp. New. Alive.
The king froze.
Moments later, the door creaked open. A nursemaid stepped into the corridor, her arms wrapped around a bundle of white cloth.
"It is a girl, sire," she said softly.
Silence.
The king stared at her, as if the words had not registered. Then he took a single step backward. The quiet stretched. His face, once flushed with anticipation, paled.
The priest had lied.
He had bought a future in gold and been handed dust.
Bitter disappointment coiled in his chest. A daughter. Not the heir he had been promised.
He muttered a curse—low and hoarse—directed at the absent priest.
After a moment, he slipped a heavy gold ring from his finger and pressed it into the nursemaid's hand.
"Here," he said quietly.
She smiled with surprise. "Sire… would you like to take—?" She moved to hand him the child.
He raised his hand to stop her. His eyes, glazed and distant, flicked toward the bundle—and for a moment, he saw the face of his daughter. Small. Quiet. Blinking against the torchlight.
Then he turned and walked away, his cloak trailing behind him like the final word of a sentence left unfinished.
Behind him, the newborn's cries rose again—thin, but defiant.
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That's the end of the Prologue. Do let me know your thoughts on it. Comment freely. Drop a like if you find it interesting.
Thankyou
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