Bloodfire

Prologue

They called me Aa'lauul, for it means ash in the tongues of younger men. They called me Aa'lauul, for they thought it would define me. They called me Aa'lauul, for they thought it would sunder me.

Their spite, I have indeed earned, for no apostle am I; no devout thrall thrown to his knees; no augur ardent among the fear-riven ranks.

I kneel not to the demand of some dominus ancient, argent, pure and divine. I fear not, the callous nature of eldritch things, nor the embers aching in their soot-swathed shade.

I quail not from the echo of those mighty steps so long ago taken. I take not the path they paved, pounded from the flesh of our feeble world - but I do see it, I do know it, I do feel its ineluctable waning.

Harrowed am I by the knowledge from which so many turn; the truth all among us spurn. Every fire fades, and now, now so too does the one whose light banished the Everdark; carved from its blackness, a hearth around whose feeble fronds the first of our kind clustered.

Even now, arrogant and ignorant, huddle they at its haggard hem, never knowing, never seeing, never caring. Not as I do. For I feel it: the weight of a waning every bit so dauntless as the drenching downpour of time itself.

Doom knells upon the weeping wind; sings high upon the breath of storms, peals hard with every crash of cruel, crystal hail.

Heavy falls a pall of death; ash-bleak upon this blighted realm.

Few know truly, the terrible power of Cinder.

Fewer still heed its call.

Nigh absent are those who fear it as all things should.

But I do. I witness its writhing serpent-lengths lying insidious; sleeping so sullen, so scornful and languid among the scree of wind-lashed coals.

Most have rendered themselves deaf to its pleas. Most have sundered their sight, stripped away their capacity to look upon our waning home, to see the rot sickly sifting, sleep-less and fitful among the soot's shifting quag.

Fissured is all which once, naught but stalwart, was. Fractured, fragile, broken upon brittle bands none had dared discern.

They called me Aa'lauul, for they thought it would amplify my frailty. Ash they called me, for they knew not: it was my very fragility, which made me stronger than ever any among their faithful could hope to become.

If mine is the way of the weak, so be it. 

Spurn my light or sanctify it, one truth does immortal remain: mine is the ember which will be the last to fade.