The Dancing Wolves

Lian is a boy with a one track mind. He shows up in a grand city one day with his mute sister, Naril, knowing nothing but the fact that by the man Ark is his one chance of keeping her safe from a danger that he finds he has forgotten, just like the rest of his past.
In this city, he surrenders to the shadows, as Ark trains him to become one of the assassins that the city's government has put to ensuring perfect control over the heart of their empire.
The boy is happy, but accepting not knowing why he needs to protect his sister, becomes increasingly hard as bits of his past memories surface and the peace in the city seems threatened by an entity that seems untouchable by the assassins.
Lian tries to focus on doing what is asked of him, but as he is forced from the city when his sister's life is threatened, he fights a battle with himself, somehow knowing that his lost past contains only pain, but constantly curious to get an answer to why things ended up the way they did when he first arrived on Ark's doorstep.

Download:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/2ou3vp7srcn88ot/The%20Dancing%20Wolves.docx

This is meant to be the first part of a trilogy named "Fire Beast", a story where the boy Lian becomes a skincrawler; a beast capable of turning into any animal at will, at a beautiful burst of green flame.
It is a story of how he hunts true love, while the world delves into misery around him.

The story is a framed narrative, basically giving away the ending in the beginning, where the main character starts the story of how he ended up where he is, a la The Kingkiller Chronicle. The overall setup is meant to give a feeling of strangeness and wonder, and the story doesn't focus as much on the actual turn of the plot as it does on character and inner conflict. The epic proportions of the plot is meant for contrast, if not ironic commentary on the usual appeal of fantasy. In fact, the main character is rather uncaring of most of the chaos wrought in the world around him. It is meant to feel like a character who is selfish enough to make the wrong choice once in a while.

While the story focuses on the main character's development, it is also a milieu story, in that it focuses on the exposition of a race of bipedal cats of my own devising. They are not placed center stage in this, the first volume, but they are a major part of the symbolism that the story covers; hunting the unattainable, bliss of ignorance, the innocence of childhood and surrendering to selfishness and insanity.

- I know a prologue is a bad idea. I'm not going to leave it out. Skip it if you find it trite. However, note that it is plot relevant.
- I'm danish, so advice on *recurring* errors and clumsiness in wording is welcome.
- As the plot tends toward being overcomplicated, I am interested in hearing whether the turn of events is believable or not.
- If you get to the ending, were the revelations crass or powerful? Was there too little focus in the story or did the broad spectrum give a more "complete" feeling of the narrative?