Prologue

Qualtendra,

I never told you who you were.

Perhaps it was guilt that stayed my hand. Guilt for inviting you to a fate I never understood. For refusing to set you free, long after the cost was written in your suffering.

Perhaps it was fear. Fear that in showing you the past, I would have to see that the first obelisk read me true. I cower in this little inn, while the Vulmarian Wars it presaged, consume Terrindral.

Today at dawn, Sentinel emerged from the forest. Once, when grief had hollowed me, he stood sentinel over me while I wept. I dared hope he had come to keep that watch again. Alas, even he turned his back on the coward who writes these words.

I spent the rest of the morning begging you to forgive me, but for naught. And so all I can do is admit everything I have been too weak to see. This is my confession.

It began in a village called Appledale, when I was just a boy.