Morind Chronicles
Prologue
The skies overhead howled in defiance as a dying woman screamed her last words. She lay, giving birth to a baby outside, on a stone altar with two young women at her side. These women were tattooed from head to toe, their faces horrific masks of swirling designs that seemed to change and shift as their bodies moved. Their bodies were pierced with small animal bones, and their teeth had been filed into feral points. As the laboring woman's lifeblood pooled around her, and her breath became more and more ragged, her efforts were finally rewarded with the birth of her first and last son. Her final, rasping word was: "Kahaj".
In the shadows, an old man hooded in a cloak that seemed to be spun from shadows watched the doomed birth. His face was riddled with dark designs that made the midwives faces look tame. His yellowed eyes watched with interest as the new life was brought into existence. He rubbed his eyes tiredly, and glanced one last time at the child lying still on the altar, its blue lips slightly open as if pleading for a chance at life. Every time he had found a birth with the right conditions, the result had been the same. Stillborn.
As he turned, he felt a buzzing, as if a massive swarm of angry bees had been loosed upon the night. A voice, seemingly emanating from the very earth around him rumbled into existence and spoke only one word. "Live". A flash of light burst from the wet altar, causing the old man to shield his eyes with his upraised arm. When he looked again, the mother, and her midwives were gone, and the baby lay, screaming as if in defiance to his resurrection. The blood pool that had saturated the altar had disappeared leaving only a circle with a five pointed star inside. The baby was in the centre of the design. Over his tiny heart, there was a birthmark, red as the blood around him that looked just like the symbol in which he lay. The old man stared in wonder as his life's work was realized in front of his very eyes. The Child had been born, and now he must protect it from the trials to come. Unseen, he walked to the altar, picked up the Child, and walked into the shadows.
Deep, in the burning inferno of hell, Nahaz watched as the Child was selected.