✦ *Prologue – The Song That Changed Time* ✦
They say time forgets most things.
Names. Faces.
Even entire kingdoms, if given enough centuries and silence.
But there are songs time cannot unhear—
verses that bury themselves in the marrow of the world
and keep singing,
even after the voice is gone.
One of those songs was mine.
Not that anyone knew it at the time.
Back then, I was just another sharp smile in a tavern shadow,
playing for coin and kisses.
No prophecy. No lineage.
Just a tiefling boy with crescent horns
and a heart strung tighter than his lute.
He had a fire in him—not the kind that burns cities,
but the kind that smolders in the walls of the soul,
quietly,
relentlessly,
until all that's left is want.
And gods, did he want.
He wanted beauty. Applause. Reverence.
Not the hollow kind tossed by drunks into a hat,
but something eternal.
The kind of attention given to stars,
to storms,
to saints and monsters alike.
He didn’t know that kind of attention had a name.
Or that it was already watching him.
She was already watching him.
She had many names.
But he would come to know her best as Valestra—
Queen of the Endless Veil,
who offered him the one thing no song could ever hold:
remembrance.
But even stories have teeth.
Even gods demand payment.
He didn’t know how the world would change to keep his song alive.
He didn’t know that one day, others would bleed for it.
That some would follow him willingly.
And some would be dragged into his story like verses into
a chorus.
But he would.
Oh, he would.