Fergus sat alone by the campfire, his sword laid carefully on the ground beside him. The orange flames flickered in the darkness, casting long shadows over the forest floor. He pulled his tattered, pitch-black cloak tighter around himself, shivering against the cold air that whispered through the trees. It'd been weeks since he'd last seen another soul, but he was a wanderer by necessity—a man of few words and even fewer companions.

As he watched the fire crackle and spit, he thought back on his life. On the children whose fates he could only guess at, scattered to the winds like leaves in the fall. It was better that way, he'd always told himself. Now, with the second coming of the Fell Dragon, he wasn't so sure. Creatures of the dark were everywhere, even this deep in the woods; he had to cut one down almost every day now. Fruits and game were scarce, and towns fared no better; the price of food was so prohibitive that people had begun to cut meals to get by.

With a heavy sigh, he leaned back against the tree, his gaze following the sparks as they danced upward into the night sky. Fergus thought back on the face of his wife, on her pleas for him to stay and protect their unborn chіld. But he couldn't, not with danger on his trail, and so, heavy though his heart had been, he'd left them.

Now, decades later, as he sat alone in the darkness, he wondered if it had all been worth it. She was gone now, he knew. Taken by illness, or so had a merchant told him when he visited the town where they'd once lived. The twin boys—and the merchant had been certain they were twin boys—had left to places unknown. Well, one of them. The other—

Suddenly, a rustling in the bushes snapped him out of his reverie, and his hand went instinctively to his sword. He rose, his muscles tense, as he waited for the source of the noise. "I hear you," he said sharply, his eyes scanning the shadowy treeline. "Show yourself."