Loomlit

Prologue

All I really ever knew was solitude, everything I did was usually by myself, little if at all with someone else. Supposedly when I was 4 my parents left me on the doorstep of a random house, hoping that someone would take care of me while they fled and disappeared into that foggy night.

No one I could ask knew why they did it but most suspected it was due to financial struggles and they simply couldn't take care of me anymore. Their plan didn't work however, the family of the house took me in and cleaned me up and by the next morning I was taken down to a local adoption center in my town.

The place which I'd spend the next 8 years in, it was a small red building, little more than a cramped, tight building with two floors and less than a handful of rooms, but the caretaker, Ms. Crest, managed well enough. Taking care of up two dozen kids in the space which could realistically house half of that was no easy feat. I still remember her striking brown hair tied into a pony tail and black-rimmed glasses from the day that I left the place.

After reaching 14 I eventually had to give up the prospects of getting adopted and set out to live my own life, easier said than done when I had nothing to prove that I was worth much of anything to anyone.

The town of Semni was a small one, isolated by the small mountain ranges that crept and rose around it, and the only real way in was an overgrown path through a valley in the mountains and a dark forest, and only having a population of around 2,000 it didn't make it as a trade hub or stopover in between the major cities and the Citadel. Everyone that lived here either leaves to make it out in the Citadel or spends their entire life here, not much hope to hear for someone like me.

And so being such a rural town, there wasn't much for an actual job, rather I had to forcefully pick up fishing and other skills to make a living from one end of the town to the other. Tanning hides and leatherwork, fishing and working the stalls of the market, chopping and processing wood for the residents and some other odd jobs.

Like every other kid living in Semni I dreamed of going to the Citadel, a place only heard in stories and tales from the traders that would sometimes head out there to do business. Back then we'd harass them to bring us with them but with no luck, to every kid, making it to the Citadel was the dream to have, maybe even the only one available.

And after 5 years of toiling away and earning whatever I could, it was finally my time to make the long journey there and pursue a life, a new life as a soldier, an honor-bound fighter with something greater to fight for, something bigger to live for.