Chapter 1: Childhood's end

The rays of the noon's sun were reflecting themselves on the small stream of water that was coming from the dense forest surrounding the village of Kurrat. Birds of all kinds were singing and whistling all kinds of tunes and melodies around. At first, it seemed like it was every bird for itself but if one would listen more carefully, all the different sounds made some sort of a strange musical composition.

Kurrat was a small village that was positioned halfway between Goldenedge, the capital of the Yapis Kingdom and its border with the Gaman Empire. Despite being relatively obscure, the villagers claim that Kurrat was in fact several centuries old and was one of the earliest human settlements in the Yapis Kingdom. However, despite its old age, it has a very small population of about fifty inhabitants, most of them being elderly folks. This is due to it being surrounded by a dense and thick forrest and its relative lack of natural resources. That's the reason why its villagers are living of raising cattle, chicken, ducks, pigs, horses, sheep and farming crops.

Outside a small house in the middle of the village, a young man was chopping woods with his aging but still functional axe. The axe's iron blade and wooden handle were chipped in various places from its extensive use but there was no alternative, for now at least.

As he swung down the axe with a "hmph" and split in half the large stump, he let out a sigh, swept the sweat from his face and sat down on the huge log that he was chopping wood on.

Looking around left and right, he could see that everyone was busy with their own type of work; some villagers were watering their crops, some where acting as shepherds to their own herd of animals, others were peeling corn for later use.

"Why do I have to do this now, it's not even the winter yet...", Craith thought to himself, shaking his head. Sure, it was late October but it still was not that cold that he needed to spend the entire day 'playing' with his most favorite/hated 'toy'.

Better to be prepared in advance, father would say and mother'd just nod. Whenever he complained about work being hard, his parents counter-complained about their childhood's having been much harder and stricter. Ugh.

As he was pondering his thoughts and taking a much needed break, his two younger siblings were playing catch and hide-and-seek around their house and would occasionally wander around the neighbour's houses.

Their house was built in the same style as the other houses in the village: walls from stones, pillars from wood, the roof was a mix of straw and tree branches and all of this building material was held together by clay and mud. It was built strong to endure the cold and harsh winters.

While his siblings (the eight-year-old Bren and seven-year-old Erya) took more after their mother, with their blondish hair, blue eyes, small noses and a shorter and slimmer body build, Craith resembled his father with dark brown hair, a mix of brown and green eyes (the inner circle of his iris was light brown while the outer had a strong tint of green to it), larger nose, a sharper and more serious face, and being slightly taller and bulkier.

"Hey there, can I join you two?", Craith raised his voice so that they could hear him from all the racket that they were producing while still smiling.

"Sorry but no, you're too old to play with us", Erya gasped as she was struggling for air since Bren had been running after her for quite a while. She was always faster than him while he was stronger.

"I'm not that old!", Craith's smile turned into a frown. How dare they call him old, he was only eighteen! Then again, maybe he was too old for these types of games...

As he stood up, swept the sawdust from his trousers, Craith was still in an argument with himself until chills started to go through his spine and an odd aura assembled in the area around him.

A feeling that was unbeknown to him started to slowly crawl its way from his feet up to his head. What was this thing about?

"Oh Lord, they're here! The bandits are attacking! Get in cover!", only when a scream from the northern end of the village pierced through the air, did Craith finally snap back to reality.

Although from the sounds of the horses' hooves it seemed like it was hundreds of them approaching the village. in actuality there were only thirty well-equipped bandits riding horses.

Most of them were armed with swords, while a smaller number wielded axes, maces or spears.

The bandits were screaming from the top of their lungs with devious smiles on their faces, causing the villagers to run in terror and bump into each other. Craith looked around him several times and opened his mouth.

"Fight back you cowards! Stop running, there are more of us!", Craith wanted to yell out but he couldn't. No matter how hard he tried, the words just weren't coming out. His eyes widened as he stared blankly in front of him.

"Whaaat...?"

Wasn't this what he always wanted to do? To prove himself in battle, to valiantly defend his village and be accepted as a hero who saved Kurrat. The axe was right by his side, he just had to pick it up and swing at the approaching invaders. So why was he just standing there, in the middle of this 'battle' like a wooden statue?!

In his mind, Craith had already eliminated half of the evil bandits while the other half plead for mercy.

"Oh great warrior Craith, please let us go and we swear you will never see us again, we promise!"

The unlucky bandits were crying and whining and begging but the hero Craith just smuggly glanced at them from above. No mercy.

That was what happened for sure, right? It was, yes it was, a distant inner voice tried to reassure Craith.

NO IT WASN'T!

No matter what Craith was thinking to himself, as he thought that hours had passed, only mere minutes were gone. And those were the worst minutes in his life, by far.

The joined screams and looks of terror of the villagers and their domestic animals was a mortifying sight. The bandits were galloping around, slashing and stabbing everything in their path. Villagers were cut down mercilessly, their houses pillaged, goods and food were being looted while the cattle was being slaughtered.

If the bandits couldn't have it then so couldn't the villagers. That was their twisted motto. As his parents ran up to him, something warm touched him.

Mother's and father's love, Craith thought.

But when he actually looked to his sides, his parents were covered in their blood, with open wounds all around their bodies.

"What do you think you're doing?! Everyone around you is getting killed and you're just standing here like it's nothing! Get a hold of yourself!", his father yelled at him as both his parents collapsed to the ground from their injuries.

Everything was burning, everyone was bleeding, they were all dying and screaming...

As the few survivors were chased to the middle, where Craith was with his parents, the bandits closed in. But they were quickly eliminated, leaving only Craith with his parents on their dying breaths still alive.

"This was the easiest battle of my entire life! These idiots didn't provide any resistance at all, their lives must have been horrible to have such a death wish, aha!", one of the bandits could be heard saying.

Then, a man who seemed to be their leader, stepped down from his horse, and walked towards Craith.

The leader was slightly taller and bigger than Craith but definitely twice his age. His hair was red, unkempt and greasy while his blue eyes were the only thing that looked clean on him. The shoes, trousers, short-sleeved shirt and a cape that was wrapped around his whole right arm and back were all in bad condition and stitched over multiple times.

"What's wrong boy, not warmed up for a fight?", the red-haired man chuckled as he held a shortsword in his left arm.

"Where are my brother and sister, what did you do to them?!", Craith screamed out, seemingly ignoring his taunting.

On this question, two of the bandits left their horses and brought in two kids, who to Craith's horror were his younger brother and sister, Bren and Erya.

"They were the only two children in the entire village, Crowley", one of the bandits explained.

Both of them were crying, with dirt and blood on their faces, they were probably captured when Craith was drifting away in his thoughts.

"These two little brats?", Crowley asked as the two siblings stood by his side.

"Please...don't hurt them...", Craith's mother could be barely heard whispering as she was laying on the ground, clutching her body in discomfort. Father was already unconscious...

Raising his left arm in the air, Crowley chuckled.

"Big brother, pl-", Erya whispered with a faint smile but...

"Farewell kids, I'm sending you to a better place now", Crowley grinned as he swung down his sword, decapitating both Bren and Erya in one swift stroke. Their small heads rolled down with a small 'thump' sound as blood started to spill from their lifeless and headless bodies that fell down on the ground. The crimson liquid also sprinkled itself onto the surrounding men, including Craith.

Maybe it was morbid to think about it but fortunately, the parents weren't present to see the deaths of their children. Father had already passed away while mother's soul was slowly leaving her decimated body.

"You sure know how to give us the grand finale boss, yeah!", one of the more deranged members of the bandit group reveled in this grueling act of child murder.

And with that, it surely marked the end of the village of Kurrat. One of the oldest human settlements in the Yapis Kingdom was made obsolete and destroyed in mere minutes by a savage band of cruel looters and killers.

As Crowley glanced at Craith, the young man grabbed his axe and threw it with all his might at the bandit leader and left out a deafening shriek that shook even the most experienced men in the group.

While the whirling throwing axe seemed like impossible to escape from a normal human's eye, Crowely was far from a normal human.

He even had time to laugh as he parried the axe that was flying towards him with his own sword, making it land right in front of Craith's feet.

"So you do have some fight in you left, huh?", Crowley giggled as he swiftly approached Craith and slashed him vertically, cutting his left shoulder.

While normally he would have screamed from the pain, the sheer adreanaline and the blood that was pumping at an accelerated rate inside of his body, only made Craith angrier as his face was now pure red and his death stare was now directed solely on Crowley.

Despite his left shoulder bleeding, Craith didn't seem to even acknowledge it, let alone fall down from the pain.

For the first time since arriving, Crowley stopped smiling and frowned upon the sole survivor who was defiantly standing in front of him.

"I must say I'm surprised, thought this would completely break your spirit but you're still not broken. Just for that, I will let you live", as soon as Crowley said these words and turned around to return to his horse, some of the bandits started to protest that it was a bad idea to leave witnesses, but Crowey dismissed it as nonsense.

"He'll die soon anyway, the world is a cruel and dark place, the kid's not ready for it", Crowley chortled as the bandits took the plunder they could carry and started to leave the village.

But some stayed a little longer, only to torture the poor boy some more...

"Can you imagine losing your entire family in front of you?"

"Don't need to imagine, I did that by myself."

"Wait, really, why?

"Long story short, they were annoying and overstepped their positions. Cheer up kid, you're much better this way, believe me."

"How long until he kills himself? Or unless he dies from that wound..."

"No way he dies from such a shallow wound, there is not enough blood to leak."

"Maybe if.. he... hehe...", the chatter from the bandits started to feel more and more distant, as Craith could feel his consciousness slowly fading away and soon enough, he could only see darkness in front of him...