I walk through these trees, brown and dry with decay, remembering days past. I once walked through these very woods as a child, before that fateful day. Pausing for a moment, I realize that I am in the very spot that changed my life forever all those years ago. A simple piece of paper calling for all able-bodied men to report for the King’s army, stuck to the wall of the church.

Those days were tumultuous, the King having declared war on the kingdom to the East. A kingdom supposedly full of ‘heretics,’ ‘blasphemers,’ and ‘witches’. What the King didn’t know was that the village I lived in was mostly refugees from said country, seeking safety from the war that had caused my home country to die.

The King went to war. He defiled the country of our ancestors, and when he learned of our deceit, he had our village sacked. We pleaded with him to stop, but he would not hear of it. He killed us, trying to be rid of our “filth” upon his land. Some of us escaped, returned home. Now we were back, revenge in our hearts.