The story of Karadiyar is preserved in the libraries of Tien and Sinraen. The miracles, wars, heroics, and follies of past ages are written on these pages alone.
Annamor: The Forgotten Prince of Tien
I. The Silent Tower of the East
Tien was not the youngest city in the realm, but it was the loneliest. While in the west Sinraen's golden roofs gleamed under the sun, in the east Tien knew only gray stone and a sky that grew grayer still. The city leaned against the foot of steep, jagged mountains, as though shouldered by the earth itself; those mountains were so high that in some winters their peaks were never seen at all, and only the eagles gliding between the clouds reminded anyone that they were there. The wind blew differently here. In the west it was a salty breath carried in from the sea, caressing the crops; in Tien it was a sound that whistled between the stones and worked its way into the bones, as if the mountains themselves were whispering.
Annamor was born among these stones. For centuries his family had considered themselves a distant branch of Esthe blood, though no one could say exactly which forgotten Esthe, or which generation, it had descended from. Tien's own records held almost nothing about his mother and father; perhaps only in Sinraen's deepest libraries, in a line or two hidden among dusty manuscripts, their names might be found — and only if someone dared to look. On the night he was born, a strange snowstorm settled over the castle as the nursemaids wrapped him in his swaddling; one of the old women touched the child's forehead, smiled, and said, "so another forgotten prince has come to us." The words were spoken with tenderness, but as the child grew, those two words — forgotten and prince — never left him; they wound around each other so tightly that it was no longer clear which one defined the other.
In the topmost tower of Tien Castle, in that narrow room where the wind slipped between the windows and made the candles tremble, young Annamor spent his days among the library's dusty shelves. The castle's old record-keeper, a hunchbacked man named Ilmar, taught the boy his letters, then left him to read on his own. Annamor read first the hunting records, then the border treaties, and at last the dynasty's own history. He read of Aroblin Esthe's ascension to the throne, of Queen Nimaor's death at forty-four from an unknown illness, of Hail's search for a cure, of Sinraen dying young of disease, and of the many heirs after him who vanished quietly among the pages.
One evening, turning these records over and over by candlelight, he asked Ilmar:
"Why do all of us die so young?"
The old man did not answer for a while. Then he set his hand upon the book, as if to shield the pages from the cold.
"Because we are not elves, little prince," he said. "Our blood is made of this realm's earth, its stone, its storms. Elves stand still for years without aging, while we pass like a single season. It is hard to accept, but it is harder still for those who refuse to."
He lowered his voice further and added: "The saints say that mortality is in truth a mercy, little prince. What they call immortality brings a person nothing but the burden of carrying the weight of the years forever on their back."
Annamor's face hardened at once. "I wouldn't expect someone of your low station to think any differently," he said, a sudden anger rising in his voice. Ilmar bowed his head, and after that night he never raised the subject again.
Annamor did not sleep for a long while that night. He looked out the window at the mountains buried in darkness, and felt something take root inside him, something he could not yet name.
II. The Crown That Was Not His to Inherit
When Annamor was eighteen, news spread through Sinraen that would change the fate of the throne: the last direct heir of the main line had died without children, and for days the council could not decide whose blood should sit upon the throne. The elders of House Tien sent west the handful of faded manuscripts they had kept for generations, those uncertain lines showing their blood reaching back to Esthe; perhaps this time, they told each other, the east's loyalty would be answered.
The answer came weeks later. A messenger from the west reached Tien bearing a sealed letter from Sinraen. It was read aloud in the middle of the hall, before all the people: the council had found the evidence presented "insufficient and ambiguous," and had given the crown instead to another, far better documented branch of Esthe, a house rooted in the west. Annamor was left only the title "Guardian of Tien," entrusted with the defense of the east — a duty offered as an honor, but that felt like an exile.
No one in the hall said a word. Only the moan of the wind seeping through the windows could be heard. Annamor looked into the eyes of the messenger who had read the letter, and saw pity there; it opened a wound deeper than any blade.
That night, as he walked alone along the castle ramparts, Berin, the captain of the guard and a man of the same age, approached him.
"This is an honor, my lord," Berin said, trying to hide the hesitation in his voice. "Guarding the east is a heavier burden than sitting in the west at a feast."
Annamor did not answer for a long time, his eyes fixed on the dark forests to the north.
"Giving a burden is one thing, Berin," he said at last, his voice as cold as the wind. "Granting a right is another. What they gave me is not an honor, but an excuse — a polite way of keeping me here."
From that day on, Annamor's trust in the west began slowly to rot, the way ice seeping between the stones of the castle's old walls cracks even the sturdiest of them over the years.
III. The Eroding Borders
As the years passed, the orc packs coming down from the north grew more frequent. At first they came in small bands, stealing shepherds' flocks and ambushing lone traveling merchants. Then their numbers grew, and so did their boldness. One winter night, some three hundred orcs attacked Tien's northern walls; torches flowed through the darkness like a river of fire, and the castle bells rang without pause for hours.
Annamor fought that night atop the walls, his father's old sword in hand. By morning the orc horde had withdrawn, and Tien still stood; but twenty-seven Tienites lay beneath the walls, among them Berin's brother. Annamor sent another messenger west, asking for soldiers, pleading for even a few companies of archers. When the answer came, it was one of the coldest days of winter, and the letter said only this: "Sinraen has its own troubles at its own borders. We ask for your patience."
When spring came, the western Esthe lord who bore the crown died of a plague, without children. For a moment, Annamor hoped the council might finally look east; after all, Esthe blood ran just as warm in the east as in the west. But the crown went instead, once again, to another branch of that same western house. Annamor received this news while sitting in the library, an old record of Nimaor's death still in his hand. He set the paper slowly on the table and looked out the window at the snow falling over the mountains.
"I protect," he said to no one, to himself, his voice barely a whisper. "Someone else rules."
He never spoke that sentence aloud again. But from that day on, it was the first thought he had each morning when he woke.
IV. Nimaor's Stone Sleep
At the foot of the steep mountains against which Tien Castle leaned its back stood a tomb built centuries before for Lady Nimaor. Statues carved from stone still bore the queen's face; despite the lines worn by time, the peace in her eyes could still be made out. The people still left winter flowers there, though most no longer knew why it mattered so much.
One night, on the oldest shelf of the library, in a chest even Ilmar had never dared open, Annamor found scorched, half-illegible leather scrolls. These were the notes King Hail had kept while searching for a cure after his mother's death — observations on the plague, failed remedies, and a long list of early deaths within the Esthe bloodline. Some lines of the scrolls had been written before Nimaor's death, in a clean, orderly hand. Other passages had later been struck through with something black and blood-like, as though someone had wanted to make certain those lines were never read again.
When he lifted the chest, Annamor saw a thin crack in the stone floor beneath it. He slipped his fingers into the edge of the crack, and the floor opened with the creak of a hinge no one had touched in years. Below, a narrow, damp stairway descended straight down to the foundation of Nimaor's tomb; the stones of the stairs were so old that no markings remained on them at all, only a flat, cold surface left by time.
V. Beneath the Stairs
Annamor told no one of this passage. The next morning he gave his guards only this order: "Let no one look for me for a few days. I will be working in the library." Then, alone, torch in hand, he began his descent down the stone stairs.
On the first level a long corridor greeted him; on the walls were reliefs depicting Nimaor, images showing the queen in her youth, moments of her playing with her children. On the stone pedestals along the floor, withered wreaths still lay — wreaths that seemed to have been left centuries ago, yet had strangely never turned to dust. As Annamor passed through, the flame of his torch trembled for a moment, as if a breath had blown upon it.
On the second level the air grew colder still. This seemed to have been King Hail's study; dried bundles of herbs still hung from the ceiling, broken jars and papers covered in illegible prescriptions lay scattered on the ground. On a table, beneath the dust, lay an unfinished letter. Annamor tried to read it, but the words had dissolved with damp, and only the words "mother" and "forgive" could be made out.
On the third level the scrolls ran out. On the walls now there were only names, carefully carved into the stone, a list of those in the Esthe line who had died young. Annamor raised his torch and walked toward the end of the list. After the last name, an empty space still remained on the stone, as if someone had known that one day another name would be written there. Annamor stared at that empty space for a long time.
The further down he went, the smaller the torch's flame grew, its light seeming to be swallowed slowly by the darkness. Even his footsteps echoed differently here, more muffled, more distant.
VI. The Days of Silence
A day passed, and no one in Tien grew too alarmed; the prince was working in the library, which was nothing unusual. On the second day, Berin came to the top of the stairs and called out, but got no answer. On the third night, a strange silence settled over the city. The wind stopped. Even the eagles that came down from the mountains did not fly that night. The castle's dogs, which always howled through the night, made not a single sound. Years later, this silence would seem like a small, unsettling sibling to the great darkness that would fall over the Darah Plains — but no one knew that yet, that night.
On the fourth day, a rumor began to circulate through the court, passed from ear to ear in whispers: "Nimaor's tomb has been opened." No one knew where the words had come from, but everyone was ready to believe them, because in Tien anything unexplained turned into a prophecy. Berin posted a line of guards at the top of the stairs, but no one dared go down. The prince's order still stood: no one was to look for him.
VII. The Question the Darkness Asked
At the deepest point, Annamor found himself not facing a being, but standing within an emptiness. Light behaved differently there; his torch kept burning, but it lit nothing around it, as if the flame had folded in upon itself. The walls seemed made not of stone but of darkness, and with every breath Annamor took, that darkness whispered something to him.
It was not quite a voice. It was more an echo, his own thoughts returning to him. Nimaor's eyes going out at forty-four, the nights Sinraen's young body burned with fever, the dozens of names carved into stone — all of it passed before him at once. And in the end, only a single truth remained, so bare and so cold that Annamor's knees gave way beneath him:
We are all fragile. We are not elves.
Annamor rose against it. First in a low voice, then shouting. They had taken his throne, taken his honor — now would they take his life as well? He reached his hand into the darkness, as if there were something there to grasp, as if there were some side he could bargain with. "I am still of Esthe blood," he cried out at the stones. "You owe me this."
No answer came, because there was no tongue there to answer, no face, no will. There was only what had accumulated over centuries: wars, plagues, delayed help, abandoned thrones, forgotten princes. Annamor's rage and his refusal laid the final stone atop that accumulation. He did not accept death — but then, death had never taken anything from him either; Annamor simply returned as a part of that darkness, without even realizing it.
VIII. The Man Who Returned in Ash and Ember
When he came up the stairs, no one knew how many days had passed, because everyone who had been counting had, at some point, stopped. Berin was the first to see him. As he told it afterward, he first saw a light in the stairwell, red and flickering, like the last breath of a dying ember. Then Annamor's footsteps could be heard, slow and heavy, yet leaving no echo on the stones anymore.
When Annamor came through the door, his hair had turned completely white, his back bent slightly, as if the weight of ten years had settled on him all at once. But when Berin tried to look for the old scars on the prince, he found none; no sword wound, no hands cracked by cold. It was as though his body had refused death once, and would let nothing touch it after that day.
His torn white cloak billowed slowly in the wind, but beneath the shadow of his hood his face could not quite be made out. Only his eyes were visible, and those eyes were no longer human eyes; they glowed with a red light, like the last embers of a hearth about to go out. At the tip of the staff he held, a stone — whether made of rock or flame, no one could tell — trembled with its own light. The old iron chains bound at his waist were no longer ornaments; they rattled faintly with every step, as if carrying the remnant of something he had left behind, perhaps of his own mortality.
"My lord," Berin said, his voice trembling, not knowing what to say.
Annamor looked at him for a long while, as though hearing that name for the first time. Then he spoke, and his voice was different from before — deeper, slower, as if every word came from some distant cavern.
"Seal the tomb," he said. "No one is to go down again."
From that day on, none of the castle's guards dared to call him "Prince Annamor." Their tongues found another word on their own: lord.
IX. A Kingdom Woven from Fear
Annamor now ruled Tien not from without, but from within. His guards feared him, but they obeyed; to him, this was a far more reliable bond than loyalty. He sent one more letter west, this time not a threat, only a sentence of three words: "The throne owes me." The answer from Sinraen either never arrived, or came back with such contempt that even the guards who read it hesitated to read it aloud before Annamor.
After the day he had the tomb sealed, visitors of a kind never before seen began arriving at Tien's gates. Some were merchants, bringing their caravans to the castle at midnight with cargo no one was meant to see. Some presented themselves as alchemists, their fingers covered in acid burns, quiet, uneasy figures. Others were merely watchers; they would sit on the castle walls for days, speak to no one, and then leave quietly one night. The people slowly grew used to these comings and goings; they seemed strange, but harmless.
But one night, a wholly different silence fell over all of Tien with the arrival of a group from the south. Dark elves, on silent horses, reached the castle gate carrying no torches at all. The guards reached for their swords the moment they saw them, but no one dared strike first. When the figure at the head of the group dismounted, everyone in the castle took a step back without even realizing it.
His name was Vaelgorn, father of the Eryndor who would be born years later. Tall and slender, he resembled an elf, but he had none of an elf's grace; his movements were too slow, too calculated, as if every step he took had been planned centuries before. His face stayed hidden in the shadow of his hood, just like Annamor's, but when his eyes came into the light for a moment, they froze even the castle's oldest and boldest guards. There was no color in those eyes; only a bottomless well, ready to swallow anyone who looked into it. No one wanted to see the bottom of that well, but no one could easily tear their eyes away from it either.
During the three days Vaelgorn stayed in Tien, he spoke not a single word, at least not one anyone could hear. He met only with Annamor, in the castle's topmost tower, behind closed doors, for hours at a time. Afterward, one of the guards claimed that as he passed by that door, he heard a deep, slow voice from within, as if it came from the very depths of a cavern; but no second ear ever came forward to confirm it. After Vaelgorn left, the people of Tien went out far less at night for a long while. And after that day, no one but Annamor ever said they had heard the voice of the owner of those bottomless eyes again.
His relationship with the northern tribes was built in an entirely different way. Rather than crushing the orcs and goblins, he chose to bridle them with fear; he knew that when one warlord was killed, another would take his place, but fear, unlike death, could be passed down from generation to generation. After Vaelgorn's visit, talk began to spread among the dark elves as well of "a being born in darkness" in the east; this was not yet an alliance, only something watched from a distance like a flame — observed with curiosity, and with caution.
Tien Castle, too, slowly changed. The castle once known for its plain, defensive stone walls now had blackened towers, its gates hung with banners of crimson cloth. On these banners was an old symbol no one could quite make sense of; some called it a seal of Esthe, others called it something else. At night, the firelight seeping from the castle's windows no longer looked like a refuge to travelers watching from afar, but like a warning. Merchants passing through the rocky paths now avoided Tien altogether, skirting as far around it as they could.
X. Toward Darah
In the end, the old, silent tension between west and east broke. Human King Amroth, descended from Aroblin Esthe's main line and the true heir to Sinraen's throne, and Thulgar, king of the Under-Mountain Folk, marched their armies east, against Annamor. The same Esthe blood ran in Amroth's veins as well, but from the line the crown had stayed with; for Annamor, this was far more than a war. The man standing against him held everything that had never been given to him: the throne, the people's love, the memory of history.
Annamor refused to retreat. Berin, now an aged commander, urged him one last time to abandon Tien's walls and withdraw north. Annamor only shook his head.
"I protected these lands as a child, with no one thanking me," he said. "I will not abandon them now, with no one commanding me to."
In Tien's final defense, though its people still wished to call him by his old name, he was now the bearer of something else. He marched his armies toward the Darah Plains, toward the day history would record him for the first time in his full power — the day black clouds gathered over the sky, the wind suddenly fell silent, and an orc scribe would later write only three words on a half-burned scroll: *the lord has come.*
When the battle ended, Annamor sat motionless on his horse, watching the dead who covered the plain, for a long time, as if counting each one. What he won that day was not merely a victory. The denial that had begun years before at Nimaor's tomb had become, by then, a road with no way back; with each passing year Annamor moved further from humanity and closer to resembling that darkness itself. And perhaps he, more than anyone, felt that this had a price.
Two Enemies of the Same Blood
A few old guards still living in Tien recall that they never once called him devil or demon. To give him such a name would have meant believing him some evil that came from outside; but those who had known Annamor since childhood knew that the darkness had not come to him from without. He was the accumulation of years of resentment, a throne refused, a death denied, all piled one atop the other; no being gave him power — he grew stronger only in proportion to how far he broke from humanity.
And the two men who faced each other on the Darah Plains, Amroth and Annamor, came from the same blood — like two branches of a single river split apart centuries before. Only one was written on the brightest page of the records, while the other appeared in them almost not at all; perhaps this whole story began, right from the start, for exactly that reason. The hatred between them was never merely the rivalry of two kings. It was far older than that, far more personal; it was a reckoning accumulated across generations of a single family, and even on the blood-soaked ground of Darah, that reckoning was never fully settled.