The Sin of the First Breath

I : Well Met, Newcomers

Tattered bright banners displaying a crimson sun tucked in by a surrounding black circle were displayed to little effect, nailed deep into the aged stone columns marking the entrance to the dismal marketplaces of west Umbrafel, the year, 113 AW. The colossal city sat tucked away in the dunes of the ghostly deserts making up the Vast White, surrounded for hundreds of miles in any direction by emptiness, bar the oases, if one knew where to look. There were the other desert cities too of course, near a dozen, all abandoned now, apart from three. Beyond the vast expanse of rolling sand dunes, were the lands of green earth. Of soil and snow. Of mountains that stretched past the eyes of men and were capped by clouds. The journey however, from one end of the Vast White to the other would take more than two fortnights, and prove to be a death sentence for anyone unfamiliar with the temperamental regions across the Vast White.

The winds were howling this day, the sun shining ever bright, casting mirages in the distances for any soul to peer at. A tall, lanky teenager, with oily jet black hair draping over his forehead, with hollow cheeks and strong jaw line, draped with some secondary silk with noticeable tears in it, strode past the columns in haste, making note of each of the small groups gathered together, almost ceremoniously, to spew forth their bouts of morning gossip. His wooden sandals clacking along the stone walkway underneath, each of the stones forming different patterns from various colored stones being grouped together to form the walkway. Once dubbed the 'Rainbow Walkway', it's name no longer held true, the stones having lost too much of their color over the years from lack of maintenance. The stones now seemed to make up an oddly colored street instead, with darker hues more prevalent from filth that plastered the stones, accumulating there over decades. The stones silhouetted the pale sand that was the ground in any other area visible.

A single, burly guardsman, who looked to be a mad dog of a man, with hair sprawled out in all directions, unkempt and overgrown, dressed in a disheveled uniform struggled to keep up behind the teen, shifting uncomfortably, and sweating in his thick brown gambeson underneath his standard. It was the same standard set upon the banners along the columns, to designate his rank as a guard functioning as the local authority.

The teenager spat to the side of the walkway, his pace just fast enough to seem unusual. His gray eyes held a measure of sadness to them, and they glared daggers at the unwelcoming, however still familiar faces among the crowd he recognized from time spent in his keep's dungeons, and received stares that were made quickly fleeting when his gaze met theirs at eye level. He knew they feared him. A part of him enjoyed this aspect to his walkabouts, through the streets in district. Constantly flanked by guards, of course.

This fear reminded him of something. He knew there was a cruelty in his heart, one that he had buried deep away when he came fully aware of it. A simple realization, made not two years past, when he'd ventured out, riding into the dunes, the farthest ride he'd ever gone on. Twelve years old, with his father and two guards, on a foolhardy quest to find an oasis, with little to go on but some crude map drawn by an elderly vagabond. The vagabond must've been brave, or perhaps foolish to be traveling the expanse of the Vast White alone, on foot. It was baffling in fact, just how knowledgeable about the Vast White the vagabond must have been, to travel the way he had. Or perhaps it was simply luck. No, it couldn't have been luck. Elden recalled the journey. The desert and it's companion sun would prove too much for any man on foot at these distances. Especially a man of his age.

Elden had never truly left Umbrafel. There was nothing to leave to, unless you were willing to make a trek hundreds of miles, to one of the other collection of cities spread throughout the Vast White, or to travel past it, to the lands of green earth. Of apple orchards, and infinite oceans. Of sailors, and riders. He'd heard the tales, even read about them in books from the caravans that had stopped in Umbrafel over the years. They were outrageously expensive, even for a lesser noble household as his own. Impoverished, they called the Caracettes. Arguably, all of the noble families within Umbrafel were when held to the standards of nobility in the rest of the Known World.