They called him Arc Knight, Redsteel, Son of Destiny, Three Spirit Core, but his mother called him Uri, his father, Urichek, and the little fishing village that later claimed itself the place of his birth called him hasun, which roughly translated as star child in Common tongue.

The prophecy had been repeated for over a millennium, and fate was so consistent that the master scholars had drawn up tomes illustrating how Uri, and those after him, could and would abolish the Great Evil. In this series of texts—nine volumes including an illuminated manuscript—the prophecy was realized and waxed over acts of courage, good deeds from A to Z, the taming of the Hero’s Horse, and the magnificent undertaking that was true love. The titans would return to dust, the kings would make their speeches, and history marked one hundred years of peace. Hurrah. Bring in the trumpets. 

If anyone asked Sinas exactly how Uri the Destined One ended in the bottom of a magic pond, he would say: “Water wyverns, and I warned the bastard.”

That is what he would say.

As it stood, Sinas, now twenty-seven, carpenter, brawler, and devout drunk, the illicit winter child of Lord Bjorn and a chambermaid, and the prophesied hero’s childhood nemesis, had been witness to the sudden and unremarkable death of worldkind’s one true salvation.