Three hundred years ago

The sea mist spraying the white pebbles on the beach with every crash and crest of the waves slowly washed the blood away. Roone sat down, forearms on his knees and knees to chest. Idly, he observed his muddy hands, crusted with blood. The hands of someone who had sworn an oath to create, to protect, to make. No sea mist or bath would ever wash away what he had done to protect his family, his friends, his people. The waves crashing and the flies droning over the mutilated bodies scattered on the steep hill behind him, did little to stop the echoes of the screaming, still ringing in his ears.

Before, he had been a scholar. A poet, a healer. Not a warrior. None of them were. Yet they fought until Erethia made sure they couldn’t fight any more. Until the Shroud. Until the sacrifice. What he had done to end the war, what he had convinced so many to do, what he would now have to live with for the rest of his long life, was for him to carry on alone. The Shroud shimmered in the sun, as in response, an iridescent arch curving upwards, an imperceptible, undulating dance of light cloaking him from high above. He might have failed her, his entire family, but he had protected the islands. The glowing sphere that now enveloped them would last for as long as the kernels of the souls lost would bear; A thousand years, maybe more. His work was done here, as was his life. He reached inside, and found a surprising amount of power left. Roone pondered that maybe this wasn’t surprising, not with what he had taken. 

Roone stood up, and up ahead, far on the horizon, the mainland of Erethia sprawled on the sea like a floating, sleeping giant. Dawn was just breaking, casting a soft pink over magenta across the stretching coastline; The ribbons of colour rose upwards far, far in the distance, and then spread out downwards again, as if an invisible hand pulled tight on the reins of morning light itself. The Citadel. That’s where he was going, to find Nadina. To find as many of his people as he could. And to find his nieces and nephews. Roone glanced at the Shroud behind his shoulder again, muttered a prayer to the Fawn, and shot to the skies.