The desert stretched on like a wound that never healed, vast and veined with forgotten paths. The air shimmered with heat, the sky so wide and pitiless it felt like it could swallow a man whole. Nothing moved here except the wind, and even it seemed cautious, curling low to the sand as if afraid to be seen.
In the heart of this silence walked a man.
His name was Ronan.
He had no family name, no lineage carved into stone, no ancestors sung about around fires. If he had ever belonged anywhere, time had scraped his name from the walls. The world, as it often did, had moved on without asking who it left behind.
Ronan's cloak was ragged, but tightly drawn. It wasn't worn for warmth. In the badlands, warmth was a curse. It was worn to shield his skin from the sun's endless stare, and to keep the memories from touching him too directly. His boots were thick with dust, the leather cracked and bent to the shape of long journeys taken in silence.
Across his back was slung a curved staff, bone and blackwood bound in thick cord, etched with small, precise symbols. Some were ancient. Others were his own invention. The meanings were known only to him, and even he had begun to forget which ones marked prayers and which ones marked graves.
He did not look like a warrior. Nor did he walk like one. There was no steel in his posture, no pride in his step. He moved as though he expected the world to resist him, but knew it wasn't worth the fight.
The sun hung high. There was no shade, but still he walked. To stop would mean to remember.
He hadn't spoken in three days. There was no one to speak to. The land had nothing to say back, and the voice in his head had long grown quiet. It only returned in dreams. And even then, only when it hurt.
On the fourth day, the road ended.
Not literally. Roads don't truly end in Telara. They fade. They dissolve back into dirt when the world decides they're no longer useful. That's what had happened here. The path Ronan followed became less a road and more a whisper of one, a suggestion left behind by someone long dead.
Ahead, stone jutted from the sand like broken teeth. A ruin, maybe. Or a warning.
Ronan paused. His hand went to the satchel at his hip. He pulled out a thin strip of dried root, bitter and sharp-smelling. He chewed slowly. The taste grounded him. It reminded him of a forest he had once known, one with dark green leaves and rains that tasted of metal. That place was gone now. Swallowed. Like so many others.
The ruin was ancient. Not in the way books call things ancient. This place felt older than memory. The symbols carved into the stones had no resemblance to the Nine Scripts. Not even the old priests would recognize them. Some of the markings looked like teeth. Others looked like eyes.
As he stepped into the shade of the first arch, the temperature shifted. Not cooler. Just… different. Thicker, as if the air had weight. He moved slowly, careful not to disturb the silence. Some silences in Telara were best left untouched. They weren't empty. They were waiting.
A sound stirred behind him.
He stopped.
It wasn't a threat. Not exactly. But it was no illusion either.
Out of the dunes came a creature. Four-legged, low to the ground, covered in fur the color of dying embers. Its eyes were glassy, too intelligent for a beast. It was thin, cautious, ribs showing. But it did not approach him like prey to a master. It approached like something looking for meaning.
Ronan lowered his hood.
They stared at each other for a long time. The wind moved. The creature sat.
He didn't speak. But inside, something settled. It was not trust. It was something older. Recognition.
"You're late," he muttered under his breath. Then kept walking.
The creature followed.
Far behind them, the wind stirred the sand. Words, half-buried in the dunes, caught the light for just a moment before vanishing again.
Zodall sees all. Zodall feeds. Zodall remembers.
The world of Telara was not always like this.
Once, they say, it sang.
Not the way people sing. Not with voices. The mountains hummed, the seas pulsed in rhythm with the stars. Even the stones had names back then. But that was before men tried to name too much.
The old legends say a being wove the fabric of Telara, one not born but made—born not of stars, but of silence. When it created the world, it did not speak. It simply breathed. And in that breath came oceans and moons and laws that no mortal could break without a cost.
The being had no name until the people gave it one. Zodall.
Zodall was not a god. It was the first question.
And when it saw what its children had done to its creation—how they carved borders into living ground, how they hoarded light and spilled blood in the name of pride—it changed. It left the world and rose into the sky, becoming the first star.
It is said Zodall burns brighter when cruelty thrives. That it lives longer for every lie whispered in the dark. That stars die when the world becomes kinder.
That is why Telara has so many stars.
The ruin ended in a spiral pit.
Carved into the stone was a well. It looked shallow, but the light refused to touch the bottom. A wind moved upward from its center. It smelled of old flowers and broken metal.
Ronan sat on the edge. The creature lay beside him.
He took a small book from his coat, bound in stitched hide. No title. No author. Just a symbol on the front—a crooked crown, broken in two.
He flipped to a page near the middle. Blank. Then he wrote.
The roads end where the stories begin. The ruins speak if you know how to listen. And the world, as always, demands a price.
He paused.
Then wrote one more thing.
I am still alive.
His name was Ronan.
He had no home. No blood to call his own. No one waiting for him.
But something stirred in the sky. Something old. Not the kind of old that fades. The kind that remembers.
And far, far away, a girl opened her eyes in a place where light feared to go. Her name was Morana. She would become the villain of this tale. But not yet.
There was still time.
Time for the world to burn.
Time for a man and a creature to walk forgotten paths.
Time for the stars to grow hungry once more.
And in the dust, beneath it all, the silence whispered:
Welcome back.