Chapter I - Origins

All the world was dark. And still.

The angry winds that usually whittled away at the austere landscape of the far northern coast of the kingdom of Malhela were eerily calm, suggesting the earth listen, for the gods had something to say…

Into the pensive night a screech and a cry pierced the stillness.

A king was born. A king with no castle, no lands, no subjects, many enemies, but a king nonetheless.

Cradled within his mothers frail and weakening embrace, the little king cried, no doubt for food and warmth. It would be many years before the baby boy would reach manhood and realize that if his heart cried for anything, it would be for justice, vindication and, most importantly, the other half of his soul.

While the child slept his mother slipped into unconsciousness, and then quietly her spirit ventured beyond the veil, from this world into the next.

Fate played its role when the calloused hands of a disillusioned warrior gently lifted the screaming babe from his mothers lifeless grip almost two days later. On a rarely used route home from his most recent stint at the war's front, it was nothing short of a miracle that the soldier even noticed the slender ankle poking from beneath a sheaf of bark.

Cuddling the child within the warmth of his war stained garb, the soldier took the boy away from the shelter of wood and moss that the mother had obviously fashioned herself.

Not far from his own small farm, the soldier would send a man to attend to the mother and her burial.

As he turned to leave, a glint of gold caught the soldier's eye. Nestled within the torn folds of the young mother's cloak was a necklace, on it a small circular pendant. Tooled onto one side was a worn down crest, with possibly a lion or some other beast as the main subject. On the other side of the amulet, barely legible, were the characters of a language of old, undecipherable to the warrior.

With the small babe occupying the soldier's left arm, he used his right to reach down and pluck the necklace from the dead woman's neck.

Although his family could benefit substantially from the gold, the soldier knew this relic was the one remaining thread the infant in his arms had connecting him to his past. So with rectitude the good man pocketed the chain and pendant away until the boy was old enough to have it.

And so began a good life for the babe, who grew in a garden of warmth despite the cold, sustenance despite poverty and integrity despite hardship.

Many lessons would be learned, taught by the soldier to the young foundling. Besides learning to fight, farm and survive, the boy would sponge up an education of integrity, character, honor and truth.

Once the precipice of manhood neared for the boy named Malkyel, he would also discover the dark side of the human condition - and that even nature harbored many evils. These difficult lessons steeled the young man for what was to come.

After finally receiving the pendant once worn by his dead mother, Malkyel sought his own truth.

While on his journey of enlightenment, Malkyel met many people, among them a wizened woman with knowledge of the ancient language that was prevalent in the once powerful kingdom of Malhela centuries ago.

After discerning the foreign characters marking one side of Malkyel's pendant to be of this old language, and their meaning, he knew to make his way to the seat of Malhela's rulers, for the pendant once belonged to one of them.

Malkyel discovered a crumbling citadel, ruled by a fractured family of fatigued nobles.

Upon Malkyel's arrival with pendant in hand, he was readily received as one of them, heralded as the prince once lost many years before. Besides the amulet, Malkyel also bore an uncanny resemblance to the royals. With hair dark as midnight, and eyes the color of singed moss, Malkyel could have easily stood in as the muse for any one of the many dilapidated portraits depicting the males of the Kyllyn family.

With the guidance and blessing of the old king, Malkyel's grandfather, the restoration of the vast, although tattered, kingdom of Malhela began. And once again, a king was born.