Well beyond the towering gates of Farathun, on a large plateau overlooking the fortress city, lay a house beside a meadow. It was a modest structure, sized for a small family and simple in design. Its only defining feature, aside from its unusual location, were the materials from which it had been constructed. The wood making up the home's foundations was as gray and mottled as bare rock. The walls were formed out of vertical, perfectly cylindrical trunks, planted flush against each other, unmarred by the elements and as smooth as blown glass. Harvested from the dread valley of Tau'Torahn, each individual log held within it eons of Memory. These undying trees had witnessed the rise of and fall of countless civilizations. Hard as the earth below, as unmovable as a mountain range, they made for a dwelling as sturdy as the plateau upon which it stood.

This was a necessary extravagance, given the homestead's less than hospitable location. Monstrous beasts roamed the land beyond Farathun, known colloquially as the Red Barrens. Though the city watch could be counted on to defend the many merchant caravans regularly arriving at their gates, they would not, and could not, spare the effort for more distant areas. Especially those so isolated, far outside the shadow of the great city.

Yet, the home had stood for over a century, ever since a long-dead Hero of Farathun had built it, on the order of the All-King. The hero must be apart from the people, from the citizens, from the city, the All-King had declared. He was the first line of defense, and his home should reflect that role.

It had taken many years for the predators that roamed the Red Barrens to learn to avoid this location. Their lives were short and brutal, spent in mindless pursuit of food or power. They were unthinking beasts, by and large, but even they had their limits. It took seven decades of strife to burn a single fact into these creature's racial memory: Avoid the meadow. There, lived a Hero, and he suffered no monsters.

This was no longer the case, but it would be some time before the beasts of the barrens realized it. They stayed far away, now. Months, sometimes years at a time, would pass without some brave, reckless creature probing the borders of the homestead. There was still time. Time enough to still call it a home. Time enough to gain the strength necessary to defend it. Time enough for a boy to become a man.

Or so one hoped.

A solitary figure stood in the center of the flowering meadow, the nameless heir of a disgraced Hero. Just a boy, now. One without family nor title. He was tall for his age, towering over most men despite only just seeing his sixteenth year. His features were plain, but he had a strong brow and square chin. His skin was tanned, and his brown, shoulder length hair was unkempt and messy. He wore simple leathers, made from the hide of some unlucky beast who had once wandered the wasteland. They were drab, dull things, a splash of brown against the bright canvas of color surrounding him.

The boy held a practice sword in a loose grip as he squared off against a lone evertree. The slightly curved weapon was nothing more than a hewed chunk of everwood, the same material as his target, and the same hard wood that made up the walls of his home. It had been sharpened into a razor's edge by his father, the durable blade holding its shape despite the battering it received each day. The boy was training.

His father had given him a single directive in the case of his death at war. "You will neither wield your own steel nor take part in war until your birth-tree has been felled," the man had told him before he had left for the distant walls of Alvasta. A neighboring kingdom had paid a tremendous fortune for Farathun to make war upon the foreign city, and it was his father's duty to stand at the All-King's side.

He had not returned. Not his body nor his sword. Executed for treason, the boy had been told, by a gruff, unsympathetic soldier. His title removed, and his benefits revoked. And so, with all else taken from him, the boy trained. There was little else to be done. He understood this, but couldn't quite control the anxiousness that tainted every swing of his blade.

Farathun had named its new Hero. By now, the streets of the city would be filled with song and celebration. A raucous joy that almost crossed the vast gulf between the city walls and the boy's meadow. He could hear it, there inside his head. The celebration, and its reason for being. His fists tightened around the weathered handle of his training sword. He could feel his own strength waning as the Memory of his father was tarnished by rumor and scorn. The new Hero had begun to secure his power.

He'd heard of this happening in other cities, lesser cities. Cities whose Heroes changed by the year. He had never imagined it occurring in Farathun. Not with the legacy of the boy's great ancestor giving strength to his family. Six generations of Heroes, all of the same bloodline, all Talented. It was unprecedented.

Seven generations, the boy promised himself. It would be seven. The legacy of his family would continue, unbroken. He'd see to it. He had a plan in place. The one that his father and his grandfather, and all else before him had followed. First, the boy would learn the blade. Then, he would earn his name. Finally, he would assume his father's mantle. The position of Hero was open to all challengers, but those had been few and far between. The warriors of Farathun had known of his family's indomitable skill. Soon, they would know his own.

But first, he would master this strike.

"The Art of the Advance," his father had called it. A strike that could not be stopped, only avoided. His family's blade art consisted of only a single technique. That the boy needed only to grasp the basics before going to war demonstrated its power.

Rather than forms and stances, the Art of the Advance focused heavily on Memory manipulation. Every sophont being was capable of sensing the Memory of the world around them with a touch and a few moments of concentration, but the boy's task was far more difficult. The Memory he sought was purely abstract, reachable only in a moment of extreme focus and imitation. A strike. The same strike every one of his ancestor's had made; a single, unstoppable movement.

He breathed in deep, drawing power from those who had come before him. He visualized the arc of his blade, how it followed and matched and echoed that of his father's and his father's father and all those who came before. He felt the blade passing through the bark of his birth-tree. He felt it as his ancestor's did. Then, he drew that Memory into himself, stepped forward and struck.

His blade ricocheted off the bark, leaving behind a tiny groove. One of many. He never struck the same place twice if he could help it; that would defeat the point of the challenge. But he was running out of space, even with his height and reach at play.

The boy sighed in frustration. Then he fell back into his stance, and tried again.

Conventional wisdom held that an evertree could not be cut. Not without a Talent or some other special method. The boy had no Talent (yet), nor any method to speak of other than what he had been instructed, yet his father had given him this task and he would see it done.

Step. Strike. Rebound. Repeat. Over and over until dawn turned to dusk and he was forced to end his practice, lest the noise attract curious predators. As unlikely as that was, his father was no longer around to protect him. The boy could not afford to take unnecessary risks. Not until his goal was achieved. Not until he was ready. For now, he retreated back to his home.

He ate a small meal of bread and gruel, warmed beside the fireplace. His home was simple in both form and function, lacking all but the most necessary amenities. What water he had remaining was stored in a clay tub that had been glazed to prevent leakage. The precious liquid had to last him until his training was completed, as without his father's ration allotment, and with no means of earning income, he would be unable to refill his stocks.

The Red Barrens were not a hospitable place. Every known source of water nearby was already controlled and the boy had little to bargain with. His best, and only, hope was to sell his sword. Farathun was a mercenary city, after all, and was not lacking in prospective clients. He could earn his way as a caravan guard, until he saw an opportunity for glory. He would need a suitably legendary task in order to earn a name. Until then, he was just a boy. One unworthy of challenging the current Hero.

As night truly began to fall, the boy wrapped himself in the tanned hides that made up his bedroll. He stared at the empty patch of floor across the room, where his father normally slept. Before the last dregs of light were swallowed, he stepped out of his bedroll and moved to an old chest. The boy dug out his father's furs and draped them across their usual spot. He fell asleep facing them, and dreamt of battle.