PROLOGVE

The children and their parents emerge from their homes and scuttle on their way to the village square. Even in this bustle, it is deathly silent. The homes are almost inhabitable due to their small size and their abundance of simplicity and lack. The scenery is dark and bleak, and the sky is a deep grey from clouds that seem almost like part of a terrible curse.

Every year the people of Poran Village go to its center to see the Bard and hear the tale, passed down to him by word of mouth, about the origin of their silent, yet unbearable pain.

---

Long ago, before this forsaken land fell to the age of dark, it had a name. And that name was Estliht. Once a peaceful kingdom blessed with prosperity and the gracious, bountiful light and wisdom of the Gods, and watched in silence by the Fairy of Legend.

Now it is cursed with chaos and death as it is beset with thickly ashen earth and a veil of black fog in the once radiant heavens. Just as it was long ago entrusted to the kindness and reason of men, it is now at the mercy of the insane and demonic as they prey upon the noble and the weak.

The Old King is accountable. It was his error that realized and provoked the wrath of the Black Demon, who was brought by the magic of a cursed sword named Aethung to wreak havoc on this land. Nobody knows the origin of the sword, or where it is now. But one thing about it is certain; no one shall dare seek it.

Ours is a tale of man's error and his vengeance. It is a tale of man's seduction by a great, unfathomable evil to undo the creation of the good he has begotten.

Our souls must never forget this tale, lest it have second verse in telling.

Before our land's descent, our great ancestors told their children about a land before Estliht. They said that the land had collapsed under the weight of its own perverse power and decadence. However, nobody - not even the people of Estliht - knew with absolute certainty how that country fell.

But when it did, a young and clever fairy appeared. He was beheld as a sacred and benevolent creature, yet they did not know his name. This Fairy of Legend, after the fall of the Land of the Ancients, helped the people to set the foundation of a new kingdom: Estliht.

He advised the people to offer a sacrifice to these Gods so that they would appear and bless the fallen land with a Holy Lineage of Kings to keep it in prosperity. The Fairy even went as far as to insist that the Gods offer the land and its people that blessing before accepting their sacrifice, to ensure beyond any doubt that Estliht would indeed have these Kings and their age of prosperity.

And so it was, as Estliht was born when the Gods gave it its righteous King and the Great King a pendant with which he and his children may pray to them and ask for their guidance and wisdom, and left with their due sacrifice, and the Fairy of Legend left the sight of his beneficiaries to where he may watch over Estliht quietly.

Many years later, however, word of a curse had emerged from the Forest of Aethung: a curse binding Estliht to destruction by one known as the Black Demon. And with that curse, the discovery of the cursed sword. the King of Estliht, son of the Great King, ordered his men to enter the forest and retrieve the sword so that it may never be used to the detriment of his kingdom. But however many men he sent into the forest, none had returned.

When the King grasped his father's treasured pendant and prayed to the Gods for their counsel, they did not respond....

It was not long before the subjects spread rumors of the King being beheld as unfit to rule by the Gods. But if that were true, why does Estliht continue to flourish? And why had the Gods not renounced his reign? After realizing these truths, the people had no choice but to have faith in the King and his progeny.

But many other questions still remain: Who was the Fairy of Legend? Who were the Gods? Why have the Gods never answered any of the Kings' prayers? And whence did the cursed sword emerge? And the curse of the Black Demon?

As long as Estliht would live, those questions may never be answered.