Chapter 1

Any child who looked at me that first day must have instinctively known that I was trouble: I nearly got attacked several times. But the kids weren't the worst: I was homeless, with no money and no hope of regaining my memory, and with a dangerous enemy. Worse, I couldn't remember who they were.

That night, I slept in a doorway. When I woke, it was to a stern lance guard hovering over me.

"You can't sleep out here, son." He said. He was a gray-haired senior officer, and had probably thought that I was a runaway.

"Uh, sorry." I said as I got up. I started walking away but I felt suddenly weak and drained. I fell, and I heard the guard say "Poor kid" as unconsciousness took me.

I awoke to find myself in warm sheets and a soft bed.

"What the heck-" I stopped, because I heard voices from the outside. I could only hear bits and pieces of what they were saying.

"An unusual boy… Black coat… Strong and agile from his looks…" I slipped out of bed, snatched my clothes from a chair by the bed, and crept to the doorway.

"I'm sure he'll be just fine." A woman of about thirty-five stood with her back to the doorway talking to a man at the door. "I know that he's a runaway, Jesse, but you can't take him to the orphanage. Besides, if he ran away from home, how long would it take his parents to find him?"

"'His parents', as you call them," I interrupted, "Are his mortal enemies. And I'm not going to any orphanage."

The woman turned around, surprised. What I probably looked like, standing there in my black coat and gloves, with cold grey eyes and an expression to match, was a cultist with the fervor of a fanatic. The man at the door took that opportunity to exit. I could see her debating whether or not to comment on my appearance. I didn't give her a chance.

"Where am I?"

"You are in Mel-Hale." The woman said. "You were brought to me by a guard I know, who said you were a runaway. You were sick, but He refused to take you to the doctor because he thought your parents would find you."

I sighed with relief. They weren't suspicious. Although I wanted to find out who I was, I knew that I wasn't normal. No one with powers such as me could ever be normal: that was the one thing that stuck in my head.

"And what are you going to do?" I asked.

"I simply planned on trying to give you a normal life." The woman said quietly.

I held out my hand. "What's your name?"

She shook my hand. "Blue."

"How do you do that?" She asked as I gazed into her eyes and felt my eyes go blue as I saw her soul bared before me. "Why do I feel as if you were probing my soul, and searching for something?"

I shook my head. "I can see the souls of people, what they have done, and all their crimes. Be glad, though: you have passed the test. I believe you."

She blushed, and surprisingly seemed unsurprised by my power. "You were wearing these when you were found." She held up a pair of words on a chain. They read "Arc Caster."

"Is that my name?" I asked myself. Something inside me said yes.

Three years I stayed with Blue, learning the ropes, figuring out how to live, and learning to wear something other then black. In time, the memory of my escape faded, although it did not go away entirely. I turned 18, and became a man. I took up training with a master swordsman, known as the Sandtiger for killing a pair of sandtigers in their lair when he was only 16, and he still had the claw scars on his face to prove it, as well as a necklet of claws taken from his vanquished foes. Those years passed quickly for me, and the day came when I knew that I needed to leave the fortress city of Mel-Hale. On the day that I decided to leave Mel-Hale, I found the first clue to my lost identity. It started when Blue suddenly stated my hometown.

"You're from Elanor."

"Elanor?" I asked. "How?"

"Your accent." She shrugged. "You have lost your memory, that much I can tell by the vacant expression in your eyes, but there is something deeper there, something else." When I said nothing, she placed her hand on my shoulder. "You were born for great things, Arc. Make me proud." She seemed to hesitate before speaking again. "You've been like a son to me Arc. I want you to know I'm as proud as any mother could be. I love you like a son. I hope you find what you're searching for. I want you to be my son." Before I left, I embraced her, the closest thing to a mother I had ever known.

She had called me her son.

I travelled west, towards my hometown of Elanor.