Beneath a bruised sky and the wind-scoured stones of Ravensmoor’s ruins, hope stirred from silence.
The refugees huddled among the shattered columns and broken keeps of the once-proud city. Their fires were small, their food was meager, and worse still, many among them bore the signs of the wasting: eyes sunken, skin gray, strength leeched by a malady that no prayer or poultice could mend. Taurdain had suffered much since the Harvester war, and though its people endured, they did so with clenched teeth and hollow hearts.
Then, without warning, the air cracked.
A pulse of power rippled through the stones. A smell of distant heat filled the air. From a place between moments, six figures emerged as if conjured by legend.
Ryhll of the North, the towering giantess scout, stood first among them, her fur-lined cloak billowing, her face stern and windburned. Her boots crushed gravel beneath her as lightly as dew.
The Grinko brothers came next, swaggering and scowling, twin goblins with mismatched weapons and leering grins. Between them walked Thornale, the Fateweaver, hunched beneath a tangle of ceremonial robes and bone talismans. His eyes were half-closed in vision, yet he saw everything.
Behind them drifted Twill, the dusky-skinned druidess, her red hair braided with leaves and bone-charms, a feline shadow slinking at her heels. Her presence brought a hush to the wind, as if the land itself paused to listen.
And last came Stisho, the Phoenix Monk. Clad in scorched silks, his bald head gleaming, each movement of his was fluid, barely tethered to the earth, as though he might burst into flame and ascend at any moment. His eyes were like coals in a still hearth, warm yet dangerous.
Each bore a flask. Simple things, glass or clay, metal or leather, but what they held within was the last gasp of myth: water from the Veins of the World, drawn from lake Glimmermere on the summit of Deathwatch Mountain.
No horns had sounded for their return. No banners fluttered. Yet those who beheld them knew: salvation had come.
Within hours, the tale spread. Farmers, warriors, and plague-weary mothers stumbled into the ruins, following rumors they could scarcely believe. Healers gathered in breathless reverence as the first drops were tested, poured into cracked lips and fevered mouths. They watched. They waited.
And then, they wept.
The wasting receded.
Not in all, not at once. But enough. The flush of color returned to cheeks long ashen. The trembling eased in fingers too long cold. Cries of despair turned to gasps of disbelief, then shouts of joy.
Refugees cheered. Children laughed again. For the first time in months, Taurdain dared to dream.
Each of the second company was honored in turn.
Ryhll received no titles, no coin. Her clan received claim to a swarth of mountains to settle in. Her sister took a seat on the council that would soon form the basis of government for the land.
The Grinko brothers and Thornale, gained a old mine and the surrounding wilderness to settle the remains of their battered clan, nearly 1000 goblins went to work immediately on their new home.
Twill was gifted a stone-wrought glade within the inner garden of the king’s holdfast, seeded with living soil from her Haggii Valley. It would become a sanctuary for the land’s renewal, a meeting place for druids and naturalists, far from the courts and noise.
Stisho declined all offers of gold and acclaim. Instead, he knelt before the sick and suffering, offering the waters himself, then vanished into the streets. Days later, he was seen training young warriors in the art of flame-dance combat near the River Gate, teaching discipline, not power.
And then came the audience with the king.
Utgar VanMorian, weary and worn by months of siege, war, and mourning, stood tall in the throne chamber now converted into a healing hall. He approached the six, not as a sovereign, but as a father of a broken land.
He knelt.
With rough hands, he took each of theirs in turn.
“Your names,” he said, his voice thick, “will never be forgotten here. Nor in the heavens above.”
He offered them no oath, for oaths are dust beside deeds. What he gave was truth, spoken before all who gathered: “Hope left us when the King fell. You have returned it. Taurdain breathes because you endured.”
And so, they were known, The Bearers of the Last Water, not as saints, nor as kings, but as those who walked where no one else could and came back changed… and bearing the light.
The fires in Ravensmoor burned brighter that night. And though the war was not yet over, nor the land fully healed, a new season had begun. One seeded by faith, watered by myth, and rekindled by the return of six legends in mortal skin.
Shermans fantasy world 