The Hidden

Prologue - [The Fall of Avaryn]

Avaryn took a breath as he bowed down before his dying father. Seeing his father like this, a man who was once so alive, so powerful and so great, broke his heart. But he knew he could not change fate.

  His father was destined to die tonight.

  “Come closer, my son.” He said. His loud and booming voice was now small and raspy.

  Avaryn stood up and walked over to his father’s bedside. The already large bed looked larger now that Avaryn’s father had grown thin and frail. And Avaryn hated the feeling he had in the room. He wanted to leave, but at the same time he didn’t want to leave his father behind in his dying moments. “Father… I have let you down.”

  “You have not.” His father said to him with his lip twitching and dry from the lack of water in his body.

  “I will make them pay.” Avaryn said. “I swear on your soul, father.”

  His father smiled as he looked at his son with his dark, red coloured eyes. “I know you will.”

  Avaryn looked down at his father’s hand and took it in his.

  “Though he is dead, Lyryn has won the battle… and now that he has won, we are the enemies.”

  “What must I do?”

  “Kill them all.” They dying man said. “Every man and woman that I named days earlier. Kill them all.”

  Avaryn swallowed down his sorrow and nodded his head. “If you will it, father, I will do it.”

  “But there will be a price for doing this, my son.”

  “And what is that?”

  “Are you willing to sacrifice absolutely everything for my cause?”

  Avaryn tightened his grip on his father’s hand. “Of course.” He wanted nothing more then to avenge his father. To kill the traitors who made him suffer.

  “Then you must devote your life to bringing down the traitors. If we are to be victorious, you must destroy them.”

  He took a deep breath. “I will do that, father. I promise you I will.”

  The once great man looked at his son. “You must let the hatred overcome you, Avaryn.” His father said. “It’s the only way.”

  Avaryn nodded. “I know. And if it means the downfall of those who hurt you, then I will do anything.”

  His father smiled at him. “The world must fear you, my son.”

  “They will.”

  “Forgive me for the burden I have put on your shoulders.” He pulled his sons hand to his lips and kissed it. “Live long.” He said, before Avaryn felt his father’s last breath.

  Avaryn pulled his hand away slowly, letting the grief overcome him. “I will avenge you.” He whispered.

  Soon after that, the most horrid night in the history of Raffyre began.

  From village to village, Avaryn went, killing hundreds and hundreds of men and women with single blows.

  That was the wrath of Avaryn.

  They once feared his father, and his father before him, and now they would fear him.

  He recited the names of the men and women that his father had spoken to him, the names he memorized in an instant. And as he killed, he checked them off the list in his mind