The Immortal / Fourth Wing

Chapter One

He had lost track of time.

It's been so long, so long that hed been around any kind of civilization that he thought, he had forgotten how the human face looked like. That happens, the forgetting, if you've been alive for the last, I don't know how many centuries. But like a curse, everything he'd lived through stays in his head and makes him relive his darkest moments by night.

The last time hed spoken must have been back in the beginning of the count. When the humans decided to start their time tracking.

He never cared for that, as the flame of time didn't have any influence on him. But it was interesting to observe, how things like the day of birth or the ending of a so-called year, became more and more relevant and celebrated.

He didn't remember when he was born for it was too long in the past for him to remember. It seemed to be the only thing he didnt remember.

A name he didn't have. At least not one he felt like fit him. Throughout his many years of traveling, he had collected many names. Interesting ones like: The Traveler or The Nomad, but there were simple ones as well, like Brian or Eldric.

But the people who had named him like that were long dead, for they have lived long ago. Most of them had thought that he had died on his travels, and somebody had found out about their connection and had them informed.

Brian had died by the Dragon plague, a sickness where the whole body would have such high temperature that it would just seemingly melt away. And Eldric was murdered by a group of bandits, desperate for his few gold coins.

Stories of The Traveler or Nomad had just faded over time. Story became legend and legend a mere myth. A myth captured in few storybooks, telling of a lone man travelling the world in shadow.

The myth became a story for children at the bed for those who still new it. The parents would tell the children that the Lone Nomad would take them with him, forcing them to walk with him, bound by their hands and stumbling over stick and stone, for eternity, if they would not go to sleep. Did the Nomad ever take a child away?

No. But the fear kept them in place, or in the case, in bed.

The last appearance of the Nomad or the Traveler was around a hundred years after the beginning of the count. Since then, there has been no sighting of anybody, or anything like him.

Kingdoms rose and fell. Alliances were formed and broken. All in one blink of an eye.

278 years after the beginning of the count, Baghira, a blind woman with hair as white as snow and skin as black as coal had spoken with him. It was his last interaction with a human.

"Your eyes are all-seeing," she had spoken. "Never to close or rest in the eternal slumber." It was nothing new to him and it was surely not the first time somebody had said that to him. But it was the last.

Baghira had died moments after. Her old body could no longer withstand the cold and harsh winds that let her small hut sway.

That happened in the now land of Poromiel. He had walked out and stood in front of the hut, observing the barren moun-tain landscape. The Esben Mountains were covered with thick snow as high as two full grown men and the evening sun broke through the thick layer of storm clouds and flooded the mountains with warm, reddish light.

He closed his eyes in content, feeling the warmth trying to leak into his body, though he knew it couldn't. He hadnt felt warm in years. He could feel neither the cold nor warmth. He turned back around to the hut.