The Eternal City was built upon generations of toil, blood and stories.
Many of those old as time stories died with the people who swore them true, but within certain underbellies of the City, some few, delicate myths still slipped from mouth to ear, surviving only as hushed whispers, passed between those desperate to be heard and those very few who were interested in listening.
Garrett had learned them all.
Each and every legend or myth the city had to offer, Garrett found. It was a hobby of his, one of the few that didn't feed into his profession, save or the fact that he would spend many hours seated just above the heads of the oldest, wizened beggars to listen to the stories they spun disguised as off ramblings.
Oh and did he listen.
Garrett has a special place in his soul for legends and lore of old, it was one of the reasons he had loved his Ancient Histories lessons with Keeper Vairia while he was enrolled in the Haven's mentoring program.
And his love for lore was the only reason why Ancient Histories was the only class Garrett had perfect attendance in.
The Ancient History lessons spoke of old, long dead civilizations, of creeds and mysteries of the past, of lost treasures and riches, Keeper Vairia, the teacher of the course, kept a close eye on young Garrett whenever he gave such fantastical lectures as they were the young boy's favorites and the early signs of his future profession were well into development.
However, with every long dead civilization Keeper Vairia introduced, he also made a point to discuss the beliefs and religions which died alongside its people...
And of their dead gods…
And of gods...
Garrett's fondest memory of those history lectures was when Keeper Vairia spent a solid month speaking of an age, a time, countless lives ago where the world was stagnant and never ending.
He described the world then as a barren paradise, full and lush with life, were existence permeated unchallenged and people lived motivationless, desireless, hollow lives.
That is until the first incarnation of life, fell in love with death.
Together, they bore change, a child, human and true, as beautiful as his mother, with eyes as green as the sea and the tide he so truly loved.
The mythos went on to describe how the child of change brought about a new era, an era of beginnings and endings, where death was no longer merely a new beginning, but rather a true, finite end.
The world continued. People evolved, forced from their purposeless stagnation lest their bodies wither away with the newly flowing times.
Life and change and death continued.
And then the precious child was wrenched from his mother's arms to become a god.
"People were greedy", Keeper Vairia said, "Greedy and desperate, especially in their times of strife."
"A war broke out across the old land. The rivers flooded with blood of the dead, and in desperate haste, an old clan from the north turned to the child of change and saw a means of control." Keeper Vairia explained.
"They believed that, if they could somehow control the child, they could control the outcome of the war, that they could change the outcome. They believed that to control the child was to control change."
Certain parts of the legend were lost to time or tongues, such as the actual happenings of the ritual.
But other parts remained true and clear.
It was a known fact that the newly created infant god that ancient clan sought to appease all those times ago, damned them.
Garrett found that specific myth both fascinating and incredibly annoying. It was bizarre to think that gods could be simply created, that any individual could simply be ascended to some other plane of existence and given dominion…
Garrett at the time firmly believed that the old gods were supposed to be of divinity and awe, to govern such unfathomable forces like life, or death or change must mean that you were of reckonable might, worthy of your title and worship.
However, Garrett quickly came to learn that the god that the northern clan had created all those millennia ago was far more annoying than divine, and if he could, Garrett would have gladly ensure that the ritual either failed outright or never occurred at all…
The Leviathan laughed at young Garrett's remark when he had seen fit to drag Garrett into his realm one eve.
"I will not lie to you little thiefling." The young god hummed through dead blue lips, his too sharp teeth clicking behind his smile, making Garrett, in that moment, never feel more like a thing of prey...
"My eyes have rarely strayed to your plight... So often do your kind, little thiefling, vie for my attention, despite how terribly dull you all are with your simple desires, you vie for my boon... Except for you, little thiefling... Tell me, why is that?"
Garrett had few answers at the time, too awed by the young god, too overwhelmed by the lore and myths surrounding the character before him.
Garrett never got the chance to answer the Leviathan's question before the young god leaned close and smiled wide enough for Garrett to count every single too sharp, too many, teeth the young god hid just behind his dead lips.
Garrett could see his reflection in the young god's eyes, he couldn't see any indication of a pupil in the Leviathan's abysmal eyes... But the ancient and fathomless weight of the young god's gaze bore down upon Garrett's shoulders, leaving no question as to where the god was looking...
And when he finally spoke, the Leviathan's breath reeked of decay and sea water.
"You bore me little thiefling, you bore me miserably..."
A cold, dead hand settled at Garrett's arm, squeezing his shoulder as the young god grinned down at him.
"The tides of the coming storm are in neither of our favors Garrett. We will meet again."
Another thing Keeper Vairia taught was the fact that history had a habit of repeating itself, regardless of the people who had learned from their past mistakes.
"Some people say that time is like a river, ever flowing onward, never stopping, and in some ways, that is accurate." Keeper Vairia had said during one of his many lectures.
"But other people argue that time is like the tide, rising and falling in endless tangent with the sea, rather than simply flowing onward. We Keepers find this to be a better representation for the sole reason that, on the rarest of occasions, the waves of the sea will overlap so perfectly with a previous swell of water that is seem as though it is repeating itself... Likewise, history may seem repetitive for the exact same reasons."
The Eternal City had a long and brutal history of civil wars, where by the people would attempt to rise up against the ruling Northcrest line and take the city back from the tyrannical clutches of corruption, or something else wordy and poetic, over and over, in time with the rolling waves of the tide.
Garrett however, never thought that he would live through such a thing…
He should have seen it coming.
Should have seen it coming for years...
The Haven's History spoke of another group hidden within the city, fully separated from the Haven, residing in the shadows, sometimes dwindling on the very edge of existence, sometimes making a name for themselves in whatever way they could.
They were harbingers of change and war.
And during Garrett's life, they had claimed the name the Graven Dawn.
Garrett and Erin, after they had defected from the Haven, had been tasked with keeping an eye and ear out for the so called Graven Dawn by Artemus, which they did dutifully, though their father offered them little in the way of purpose behind the task.
Arguably, neither the Haven or Artemus knew very much of the Graven Dawn, histories spoke of the horrors they bred and the fires they fueled. But unlike any other group to rise and fall within the city, they were constantly on the fringes of the city, evolving alongside her without ever fully integrating or holding to any past virtues.
It made tracking the cult difficult during its years of dormancy, and those years of dormancy could span mere seasons or decades.
All the Haven knew was that, unless the cult mobilized, they were of little to no threat to the Haven, and likewise, Artemus believed them to be of little worry to Garrett and Erin…
Until they were.
See, the Haven was not the only body within the city to concern itself with things such as the repeating histories of the Eternal City, they were merely the first and arguable the most diligent when it came to the recordings of said events.
The Northcrest family, however pitiful few remained, would, as they always did, eventually catch onto the festering wrath boiling in the shadows of the city below, and so they would also begin to worry over each whisper to creep through the streets they claimed to own.
The city was still in shambles from the last war, a civil war, because no one wanted the city. The people were scared and hungry yes, but complacent, there had been far worse times than these and the people knew that…
But if offered something more? Oh they would claw and crawl to it desperately as if it were salvation itself.
And who, of course, would take the brunt of the blame for the sorry state the city found herself in?
The Northcrests would not survive another civil war...
And that fear, the same fear that brought those ancient kin to cast a mere child into godhood, made way for haste.
And in that haste, the Baron Northcrest decided to once again, as his ilk had done so before him, seek control over the child of change.
However, the Barons means to seek control were very much unlike those before him, impossibly so.
Rather than attempting to appease the god for favor or attempt to control the god by what little force mere mortal men are capable of.
The Baron sought to snatch power straight from the god.