1 Prologue

The attacks upon the port town of Vinestow devastated not just the business of the community but the many family that have lived in the shanty town just along the forest edge to the western side of the canal. The wild attacks had come by the hands of the cold neighbors to the east, from across the water, in the land of Festonna. Vinestow was the collateral damage written off in the recent war efforts to conquer the thriving eastern island in the midst of the Galgarem waters. Caught between the greed in the lands of the war kingdoms makes for this particular tale of suffering… Shall I continue?

I came to arrive in the entry of the wooden tradesmen's post in the arms of a stranger. The wreckage of the street we entered in from not ending at the door but crossing over the threshold with the unconscious girl who seemed to be nothing more than a mop of matted hair and flesh. Dirty. Pathetic. With nothing to offer. In the time since her eyes opened to see the working flames of the gas lanterns along the green wooden walls, that girl became a woman. That bag of bones became me.

It took a year to figure out that what had happened was never going to change, and to realize The rest of my life was never going to be the same from then on. To arrive as a young girl in the entry of what seemed a castle to unknowing eyes, the home of the tradesmen was a palace in contrast to the streets. My life became those wooden walls from that day. Those walls, and that family.