Disclaimer: Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones and its characters belong to Nintendo and Intelligent Systems.

Note: This story is just my take on a certain knight's childhood before he comes to serve the Royal House of Renais. Please let me know what you guys think about it. Thanks.

Ray of Hope

Chapter 1: The Boy

Kingdom of Renais,

Year of the Stone 791,

A young boy was wondering one of the many streets in the capital city of the Kingdom of Renais by himself. His appearance suggested that he could not have been much older than ten or eleven years old. Casual observers noticed that the boy was obviously from a poor family as his tattered clothes were in desperate need of repair. Despite his clothing, the boy appeared to be clean. The most striking thing about the boy; however, was not his clothing but his face. He was, as many noticed, a very handsome boy. His soft brown eyes glinted in the sunlight, while the wind played gently with his short, dark crimson hair.

There was a bright smile plastered on the boy's angelic face, which effectively prompted many of the townspeople going about their business on the street to smile with him. Strangely, there was an unexpected air of nobility about the boy. He was not a noble, yet his posture was nothing but regal.

The boy trotted briskly along the street. He began to run faster as he neared a small slope leading to a large bazaar, which was now bustling with many sellers that had arrived early and had just finished setting up their booths. They were now competitively shouting and flaunting their goods at the crowd trying to catch their attention.

As he reached the bazaar, the boy paused briefly to catch his breath, his small chest heaving up and down. 'Today, the bazaar seemed to be unusually busy.' The boy wondered. He had been coming to the bazaar every now and again, but never before had he seen so many people. Usually, most of the sellers and shoppers in the bazaar were from Renais and the neighboring Grado Empire. However, today was definitely different. There seemed to be more people, people whom he had never seen before. 'Could they possibly be coming from Jehanna?'.

The boy stood transfixed, staring in awe. Their clothing was so genuinely unique, so colorful and exotic, so different from that of his own and the regular shoppers frequenting the place, that he could not help but stare. They were unlike anything the boy had ever witnessed in his young life.

The boy noticed a group of burly looking men walking hurriedly towards him. As the men walked by, the boy could detect a faint aroma, a mixture of some kind of flower and spice, perhaps? 'It smelled pretty good.' The boy sighed. 'Would it not be wonderful if one could travel freely to these exotic places, to abandon, even for just a short while, the painful reality?' The boy looked wistfully at the men, wishing that he could just get away and forget what he was……..a pitiful orphan.

"That is right. That is what I am." Once again, the boy's mind wondered back to that fateful day three years ago, the day that changed his life forever.

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Flash Back: Three years ago,

The boy remembered it well, how cold and gray that morning was. No sun was in sight, just the frigid wind blowing against his small red cheeks when he opened the windows of his room. By then, his father had been gone to war for just a little over three months.

The reason his father, an elite commander of the Renais Imperial Army, had to go to war was because His Majesty, King Fado, had personally requested it. Several weeks earlier, a civil war had erupted in the Grado Empire, Renais' neighboring kingdom. It all started with a dispute between Emperor Vigarde and one of the elite commanders who was also a member of the Grado High Council. The commander strongly disagreed with Emperor Vigarde over his governing principles. Emperor Vigarde had been a long time champion of peace and would never allow any kinds of violent act against his people. However, the elite commander disagreed. He had wanted the emperor to assert more authority on the people to make them obey their orders. He thought that the king was being too lenient on his subjects.

The commander also believed that more soldiers were needed in order to protect the empire. It was true that the Grado Empire's military was the strongest out of all the five kingdoms of Magvel. However, one could never be certain when one's own kingdom would be invaded. He wanted the emperor to draft more people into the army.

The emperor, being a gentle and compassionate person, would, under no circumstances, allow such a thing to take place. He simply did not wish to go against his people's will. Emperor Vigarde argued that this act was exactly what a tyrant would do. "You must not force people to become soldiers. If their hearts were not in it, then it would not be better than acquiring puppets that just lifelessly followed orders."

"What is wrong with that?" The commander was visibly furious and thought Emperor Vigarde a fool whose principles were unrealistic and impractical. "We must be prepared. Should there be an invasion, we must be ready!" The commander spoke angrily before storming out of the room. Later on, the commander gathered several other members of the High Council as well as the other elite commanders that shared his belief and formed a faction that openly opposed the emperor. The faction was so powerful that it became a threat not just to the emperor but the empire itself. Since the faction's military prowess was greater than that of the Imperial Army, that left Emperor Vigarde with no choice but to enlist the help of his good friend King Fado of Renais, which he readily agreed.

The boy shuddered as a strong breeze blew into his room. He still remembered the day his father left him and his mother to lead the troops to Emperor Vigarde's aid in order to defeat the resistant forces in Grado's capital city. It was hard to believe, but it had already been three months since then. He wished that his father would come back home already, now that his mother was sick. Of course, his mother did not tell him that she was sick. If anything, she was trying to hide it from him out of fear that he would be worried about her. He found it out by accident when he walked in on her one night and found her coughing out blood, spilling it onto her white cotton nightgown…

The boy was deep in thought, when a sudden loud knock on the door downstairs jolted him back to reality.

The boy rushed down the stairs to see who it was. Once he reached the landing, his mother was already at the door speaking to their visitor. The boy could not see who their visitor was, but he could make out the crest on the hilt of his sword, the only visible part of him. The crest was that of the Royal House of Renais, and that could only mean one thing. The visitor was a soldier from the Imperial Army! At that thought, the boy was elated. Had his father finally returned home? If so, then why did he not come into the house, and why was his mother clutching her chest like that?

Before the boy had any chance to ask all these questions, his mother suddenly collapsed onto the floor. The boy was horrified and immediately rushed to his mother's side. He picked her head up and examined it. His mother was breathing but her face was drained of any signs of blood. The soldier calmly patted the boy's head as if what had just transpired right in front of him was an everyday occurrence.

The soldier proceeded to lift his mother off the floor and carried her into the next room. He gently placed her on the bed before turning around to speak solemnly to the boy. "Take good care of your mother, boy. You must be the man of the family now that your father is no longer here." He patted the boy's head once more. "Your father was a brave man. He died on the battlefield just like a knight should, with honor. He fulfilled his duty as a knight until the very end." The soldier then got up and headed for the door.

The boy was numb. He was, of course, old enough to know what the soldier meant. He knew what death was. He often heard his father spoke of it with his fellow knights during one of their visits. He knew that his father would not be coming home, that he would never come home. The boy continued to sit next to his mother's bed. He stared at her peaceful sleeping face wishing that his tears would stop…

End Flashback

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The boy sighed yet again. His mother never quite recovered from the news of his father's death. If anything, the news had worsened her condition. His mother continued to struggle with the disease for a few more months before finally succumbing to it. She passed away when he was barely eight years old. After that, he was sent to live with his mother's relatives.

Staying with his mother's relatives was the worst part of the boy's childhood. His great uncle and aunt were quite rich, yet they were still jealous of his mother even when she was still alive because she had married into one of the greatest noble families of Renais. Overtime, their jealousy had turned into hatred, and somehow they had transferred that hatred to her son. The boy was miserable. They had turned him into their personal slave, working him all day and night.

One day the boy could not take it any longer and decided to run away from that wretched place. He wondered the streets aimlessly until he collapsed in front of a very old church, hungry and cold. Luckily, an old priest found him and gave him food, shelter, and a place to stay. The boy was grateful to the priest, so he gladly became the priest's errand boy in order to help around the church. Since the church was very old, they did not have that many parishioners. They barely had enough money from the donation to get by. The boy could imagine the trouble the priest had to go through in order to feed and cloth him. As soon as he turned ten, he had asked the priest if he could go look for jobs at the bazaar.

Every now and then, he would come to the bazaar and ask if anyone would need help with anything, be it carrying parcels, shining armors, or sharpening swords, the boy never complained or hesitated to take on any jobs. He would do his job diligently.

Seeing this many people today made the boy happy. He should be able to make a lot of money today. He was hoping to buy more candles for the priest so he could do his study at night.

The boy quickly scanned the bazaar looking for potential customers when he chanced to spot a group of four boys standing in front of one of the booths that seemed to be selling various kinds of candies.

The leader of the group, a big thirteen-year-old boy with missing front teeth, turned around as if he could feel someone staring at him. He saw the boy and nudged the rest of his friends to look at him. They seemed to be whispering something about the boy, for all four boys burst out laughing at the same time after they took one look at him.

The boy paid them no attention, which in turn, infuriated the leader of that group. He stalked slowly towards the boy.

However, before he had a chance to reach the boy, someone shouted something, which caught both of the boys' attention.

"Make way, make way, Their Royal Highnesses, King Fado and Princess Eirika have arrived. Make way, make way." Someone was shouting as the royal carriage sped by.

The two boys exchanged a look at one another and the taller boy backed away. The people in the bazaar stopped and dropped everything that they were doing and made a wide path for their beloved king and the little princess.

"Consider yourself lucky. Next time, I will get you for sure!" The taller boy spoke angrily. The boy ignored the comment once again and disappeared into the crowd.

TBC

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