The boy with the blue eyes and golden locks that carried the weight of so many on his then frail shoulders was born with sorrow in his veins. The presence of a hood and scythe loomed over the room when his soul bounced off the walls for the first time, illuminating the hands that reached for him with a gray pallor of the clouds themselves that hung near the horizon. A cry was heard, whom it belonged to was never identified, and hands were held and lips pressed tightly together, the midwives not wishing to burden the small infant with the despair that would soon find the entirety of the kingdom, the entirety of those who had expected three glimmering crowns to emerge onto a grand balcony instead of two. They did not wish to trouble the boy with more than he was already expected to carry, tasks and destinies set forth in a straight, orderly line in some minds, and jagged peaks and drops in others. The boy was expected to do great things, wonderful, courageous and remarkable tasks, most impossible to imagine and even more impossible to perform. It was only fair that such a hero begin his journey with such horror.
News spread after that bittersweet day, cries resounding in the streets and mournful silence taking over the halls that once held tremendous hope and life. On the day that the boat was set out, an eerily lifelike shape set on the vulnerable wood, the blue-eyed boy did not cry, and he did not feel for the woman who had died so bravely for his lungs to catch the air. He did not see the silent, vengeful tears of his father hiding in the shadow of his crown and he did not register the churning of the waves lapping at the shore of the lake that held his genes. But he did feel something stirring inside of his small, new body. His not yet developed mind could feel the ancient blood infused into his skin flow through his core, the mystic presence in his soul that was now rejected by so many brimming at his minuscule fingertips. He did not know it yet, but the boy with the blue eyes and golden locks would do great things. He would reach bitter defeats and love people that would love just as hard back. He would thrust gleaming swords into the air, high enough to graze the stars and he would mourn over blood spilled before he was able to seal it back in. This presence was a part of him, no matter how much he would wish it away.