Prologue

The weary wind blew the gray mist over the Auberdine sea towards the shore. The mist drove the crabs up the slope. Their legs climbed over the ribs of the plesiosaur skeleton. Buried in the silvery gray sand were other things: fragments of shipwrecks also brought ashore by the waves.

Dores Stryfe woke up in his solitary little hut. Looking out from the window of his bedroom, all he could see was the sea and the mist.

He had that dream again. Today he was determined to do something, but the dream had somewhat taken away his courage. He got out of bed quickly and washed his face. He closed his eyes tightly in front of the washbasin and felt dizzy for a moment. Drops of water fell from his nose.

At that moment, there was a sound outside the door.

"Dores, I swear by the beard of the King of Bronzebeard that today is a good day for fishing. Either come out quickly or let me in. I'm not going to wait here for you all day."

Dores opened the door. The dwarf Gamero Ironhammer shouted, "Don't close the door, it's stifling in your house!" and squeezed into the little hut.

"Haven't you eaten yet? Dores? Did you just get up?"

"I was about to bake some bread."

"Then don't dawdle. We can eat it on the boat."

"'We'?"

"I don't intend to eat your wooden bread. I brought wine. We can drink while fishing."

"Then wait for me." Dores went into the kitchen.

There were a row of wooden shelves in the house. They did not look like furniture or anything practical. Gamero tapped these shelves with his fingers and said, "Is this what you made for the Fire Festival?"

"Yes, but it's not finished yet. The final assembly is still needed."

"Such good wood, all to be burned at the Fire Festival, what a pity."

"It's all for the strange play of the young people."

When these shelves were fully assembled, they would become a multi-level maze erected on flat ground for the contestants to climb and grab the fireseed at the top. After the winner was determined, he would use that fireseed to ignite the maze and bring the carnival of the Fire Festival to its climax. The young man who got the fireseed, needless to say, would become the focus of the girls' attention.

"Tsk tsk, there are patterns too. You are really the best carpenter in Auberdine, no, in Kalimdor."

"Thank you."

"Your gratitude seems perfunctory. Don't worry, my words are absolutely true. In the future, whoever asks you, just say that I, Gamero Ironhammer, the best and unprecedented field archaeologist in Azeroth, have given the final conclusion. Hahaha...ha."

Gamero laughed meaninglessly by himself, then sat at the round table in the middle of the house. After a while, he heard footsteps behind him and said, "Is the bread ready? Why don't I smell anything..." He tried to look back, but felt a burning sting in his neck, and his throat was tightly constricted. Reflexively, he lowered his chin and opened his eyes wide, clumsily placing his left hand on his throat, feeling an thick iron wire.

Dores tightened the iron wire with both hands. The dwarf's extraordinarily tough skin reminded him of the feeling of sawing wood with a wire saw. Gamero's fingers tried to dig into the iron wire and his neck, but Dores clenched his fist behind the dwarf's neck and slammed the iron wire hard, smashing his throat against the edge of the table.

The iron wire sank into the flesh, and then Dores saw blood. The fresh blood oozing from the table edge reminded Dores of the endless flames that appeared in his dream this morning. In his dream, he wished to throw himself into that flame because someone was waiting for him there; but he could not do it, his legs refused his will and desperately fled from the flame.

Thus he fled from all that belonged to him, leaving the flames far behind, and then sank deeply into the lonely, heavy mist.