Prologue: The Restless Woods
Cradled in sylvan green, a child cried in the faded afternoon sunlight. She hungered. The child lay bare and humid on virgin soil, innocently unaware of the time she had been born into: a world torn asunder by forces beyond flesh and nature, a war of endless reprisal that made puppets out of men and wastes out of the land. It would have been merciful for a beast to devour her out of necessity, than suffer the fate shared by countless, out of cruel inevitability. It was not to be, for seven days she lay pale on the grass without nourishment; seven days and no beast, small or big, did more than a scrutinising sniff.
Come nightfall, Constanta heard a noise in the depths of the forest. A distant, human sound beneath the song of the owls. The seamstress separated from the group around the fire and braved into the jaws of the overgrowth. Her pace, barefoot and bold, accelerated as the sound became clearer. Her heart skipped a beat at realising it was the cry of an infant. What little vision she had, blurred as she plunged further in. Twigs snapped under her feet, and snakes hissed in protest as she ran. The meagre woman cared not. She had already lost a daughter a fortnight ago; she would not let this child die without a hope. When she finally emerged back in camp, an hour had passed since she had left. Her people looked on as she stepped into the fire with a baby in her arms. The warmth of the fire and Constanta's arms eased the child into quiet.
At dawn, Constanta observed the child she had found. She had a few strands of red hair and no umbilical cord. A strange smell of copper lingered about the baby, and it became increasingly feint until disappearing as she bathed the child. Noon came and men wandered off to hunt for dinner while others practiced their craft to earn the collective some passage to the next town. Constanta left the child in the care of her nephew Liviu and his sister Magda while she tailored ornamental curtains in whites, browns and reds. She made sure to work hastily to also sew something for the child.
Constanta, Liviu and Magda had grown to care for the child. It was decided on the third day that the baby would grow under their care, to eventually become part of their small nomadic community. She only needed a name.
"Viola," Constanta decided, coating the child in the mantle she made for her; roses and lilies over a dark mossy green.
"He's only a child," he heard one of the men say a few metres away. Mihael could not see who, as his eyelids and cheeks were too swollen from the beating and the lashing to see anything beyond a slit. Only a child, he thought; taller, stronger and quicker than most, but still a child, and now death was approaching his way. On any other occasion, he thought he might have wanted to laugh. After all, it had been his decision to leave the monastery at the age of fifteen. He wanted to escape from the rigid lifestyle, and he did so by joining a pack of outlaws. He had grown aggressive and wild, but the teachings of the monastery never quite left him. Instinctively he knew that a rigid approach would have averted this fate.
He could not think of laughing in face of the irony. He might have misbehaved, but there was a very clear line between the atonable and the irredeemable. He had done the right thing in turning down the job, and he was to pay for it. Some of the men said mockingly that they would simply castrate him and let him go, but he knew better. The lynching would soon begin, and life would leave him in brutal fashion. It was the way outlaws died; contorted and unforgiven. Mihael chose to be an outlaw. He accepted his fate.
But he would not allow himself to die without dignity. He resolved to die laughing, to spit at his torturers and curse their descendants. Restrain himself from screaming would be a challenge, but it was the worthiest thing he could do in what little time he had left.
Mihael did not die that day.
In the instant before his slow execution, the inside of his head turned into a deafening roar. All seven of his foes lay in ruins, broken and splattered on the trees around the makeshift gallows. He never felt his body move, and he still had to pry himself free after the carnage had ended. He did not return to camp that day, or to the monastery. Instead, he opted to take himself to unknown grounds; to take a new path. He did not see the strange crescent moon branded on his chest until two days later, given lodge at an inn located in the outskirts of Transylvania.
Transcending history and the world, a tale of souls and swords - eternally retold.
The Cursed Sword's corruption threatens to plunge human kind into perennial carnage. One by one, the people of Europe fall before the influence of Soul Edge. Only the Spirit Sword can stop the tainting, yet a cold and dead future awaits in its dominion. The apocalypse approaches.
Graced and damned, anointed in the forest where horrors dwell and heroes perish, a fold of two will traverse the dark towards inevitable war and devastation in order to prevent the doom of all human kind.
Thus begins the story of the Seer and the Beast on one night in Milan.
January 1st, 1607...