franklindpl
The world shrinks to the crunch of damp wood and the heavy weight of coarse wool over the shoulders. France is not yet a unified realm; it is a patchwork of impenetrable forests and feudal domains where law is written by the strongest with poorly forged iron, and lands where hunger is a constant neighbor. The family tills the meager earth, tends the livestock, and lives under the perpetual shadow of the tribute owed to the local lord. Potatoes, scarce wheat, hand-tanned furs-everything is handed over in exchange for the vague promise of protection against marauders.
The air that year tastes of sickness. The plague creeps into the stables and mud huts without a sound, taking the weakest with a fever that burns the flesh from within. Amidst this atmosphere laden with omens, the young man crosses the forest boundaries to gather firewood or track a stray animal, and encounters winter incarnate as a beast: an enormous, wild bear that knocks him down with brutal force. Claws sink into his flesh, pain is a blinding, absolute flash, and consciousness fades beneath the canopy of dark trees.
He awakens hours or days later. The mud around him is black with his own blood, but his chest does not hurt. There are no scars. Only torn clothing remains, alongside a strange, altered stillness within his own body-a heartbeat that has shifted its rhythm, becoming eternal. When he returns to what is left of his home, the silence is absolute; his family has already succumbed to the plague. The years pass, the seasons turn, and he retains the exact same youth, the same face, while the villagers nearby begin to eye him with suspicion. They call him a sorcerer, a madman, a freak. They cast him out, point fingers, and force him to flee toward the shadows of the royal roads, where he learns to survive among local wars and brief sieges.
It is amid one of those conflicts, when a port city burns under torches and black smoke eclipses the sun, that the true turning point occurs. Among the corps