Chapter 1 Dreamer Forsaken

A cold gentle breeze found its way through the cracks in the barn. Stinging his caramel tattooed skin. It made him shift uncomfortably on the stack of hay he'd been lying on for three days now.

'When are they going to let me out of here'

The Emperor's Shepherds sent word of their visit and the villagers swiftly wrapped him in chains, tossed him into this barn and sealed it shut.

He wasn't entirely surprised. They've hated his very existence in the village since the day they found him sitting beside the well all those years ago.

What did surprise him was the two weeks it took them to make their move. Enough time to mourn his mother, the Chief. Then three days ago they tossed him into the barn.

He also didn't expect how long they planned on leaving him in this Dreamer forsaken barn. 

The Shepards had long taken their tests and carried off every potential whisper around his age in the village. And with how fast their soulkins are, they were likely already at the capital by now.

'Why am I still chained up then... it can't be. Are they planning on starving me to death?'

Which wasn't an easy task if that's what they had planned for him. He was Kor'alan. 

The very reason they hated him was also the reason they should've known starving him could take weeks if he directed all his Lumen to keeping himself alive. 

He did try to break the chains but it proved futile. The chains were imbued with a Truth—a law enforced by magic; "Restrain target".

No doubt the work of the only ascendant left in the village, Old man Dax.

'I wonder if they've elected him Chief yet'

The old man always wanted that title and from what the boy learnt, he was pretty close to getting it too.

That is, until his mother returned to the village. The only one to return from the Shepherds and the only ascendant in the village at the time.

Old man Dax stood no chance against, in both wisdom and might. He gave up on the title and certainly envied her but the boy knew he respected her as well.

Unless the matter involved him.

The day he was found, Old man Dax had been the most vocal about not admitting him into the village.

"Look at those tattoos, he's a filthy Kor! Keeping him will incur Maeleths wrath and bring ruin to us."

His mother clearly didn't listen to him but ever since then, Dax has found fault in everything he does and blamed every unfortunate event on his presence.

Everyone agreed with him of course but no one dared to act on it. Even when Dax became an ascendant, challenging the Chief equivalent to suicide.

"Strength is everything in this world, Ezra. But never let it blind you"

A smile formed on his lips as he remembered her words.

He took a deep breath and began channeling lumen to augment his strength in yet another attempt to break the chains.

Futile.

"Damn it" 

A truth was never something one could overcome with brute strength.

Ezra was a barely tolerated member of the hunter party so he had witnessed Dax's technique in action multiple times.

Other than his mother, he's never seen anyone or anything move when Dax doesn't want it to.

Being unawakened and two tiers below Dax, Ezra had zero chance of getting free today.

Or so he thought.

The barn doors burst open, replacing the gentle breeze with a harsh burst of snow and biting cold winds.

"Lovely day, Eric" he said before the man walked up to his stack.

"Freak" Eric spat.

Ezra knew how unnerving his ability to sense people was and how they called him a beastman for it behind his

back and to his face.

But their reactions to it always amused him.

Ezra smiled.

"Oh don't be like that. Is it finally feeding time?"

And for the first time, he sensed something from Eric he never thought possible, guilt.

"Father says you're a curse on us. That you're the reason the Shepards didn't pick me"

This didn't surprise Ezra in the slightest, Eric's father was Dax after all. Eric had awakened and became a whisper like the others their age but the Shepards only took those with high resonance leaving people like Eric no choice but to remain in the village and join the hunting parties.

Even as Ezra sat up, Eric refused to meet his gaze.

"This is your fault. If you weren't here, Maeleth wouldn't be angry with us. Wouldn't have cursed us. The Chief wouldn't have died and this wouldn't ever have happened."

Ezra remained silent. Eric's voice was trembling. He was terrified. Something was wrong and Ezra didn't know what.

Ezra immediately stretched his senses past the barn for three hundred meters which was his limit.

He's never understood how it worked but ever since he was a kid, he's known almost everything taking place three hundred meters around him.

This ability came without being awakened so the villagers speculated he must be descended from a beastman and cursed just like all the other members of the Kor'alan tribes.

But the ability was also useful in hunts and patrolling their borders so they didn't oppose much when the Chief added him to the hunting party.

But that useful ability wasn't giving him any good information right now, in fact everything he felt was troubling.

Greyholm was a pretty big village and busy even on a cold day like this but his ability told him there was no one for three hundred meters apart from him and Eric.

"Did something happen?" 

Eric finally looked him in the eyes and he saw the guilt as clear as a day and also a hint of pity.

"On your feet, you're being summoned to the square" 

'So that's where everyone is'

Ezra breathed in relief, the square was well outside his range, no wonder he didn't sense anyone.

As much as they hated him, they were his mother's people.

"They'll come around" she always assured him.

He followed Eric out the barn into the cold, walking two feet ahead of him. 

Eric's expression did worry him. Clearly Dax has arranged some sort of punishment for him.

'Fingers crossed for simply banishment'

After walking a while, he started noticing the damaged houses, the broken doors, the shattered windows and blood on the once white snow.

Worry crept in and Ezra stopped walking.

"What happened?"

Eric shoves him forward.

"Keep moving"

And Ezra did and his horror worsened as the blood was now accompanied by bodies; men, women and children, all scattered around him like broken mangled dolls.

Some of them looked like they died from knife wounds, some from multiple bites on their bodies while others looked like a huge boulder fell on them.

The last ones he couldn't figure out what killed them but he knew what liked the others.

"Goblins" 

Horrid little things, barely tall enough to reach a man's thighs but with a viciousness only matched by their cruelty. And they always move in a band of about thirty.

"How did goblins get this far?" He asked.

"Where is the hunting party? What about the guards, why didn't anyone stop this?"

And worse, how didn't he sense this.

But he knew how.

Those first two days, he had given up on everything and resolved to even die in that barn if they wanted.

His mother was gone and he had nothing else.

But even without him, the hunting party aside, the standard guards stationed in the village were all awakened and trained. 

He'd seen them destroy multiple goblin invasions with relative ease.

"Asking questions won't fix anything, just keep moving and you'll see for yourself." 

He continued walking, constantly searching for any signs of life till the first people entered within his range.

He could tell they were terrified, some were injured too but that wasn't enough, he needed to know what he was walking into.

"I want you to know that I didn't want this, despite what I think about you, this was not how I wanted things to go"

Eric's words ca

me just as his range reached the square proper and his eyes widened.

'Thats a bloody Troll'