(A/N: Imperfect. Attempts shall be made to improve this chapter, as with most of my works.)

– Prologue –

– Part One –

A statue stood upon a hill, which in turn stood within a village.

It had been there for longer than anybody could remember. All attempts to remove it had been in vain; not even the strongest men and women in had been able to uproot it. They had even tried to lift it with magic – to no avail.

So, the villagers had come to accept the statue's presence. They didn't like it, but they weren't going to relocate two dozen wood and stone structures built into the ground itself.

They had reason to dislike, even hate the statue. Through years of wind and rain, not a single detail wore away, leading some to believe that the man it had once been was, somehow, still alive. It usurped their every attempt to bury superstition and fear of magic – the very hatred that had brought the country close to ruin, once.

It was hard. Day after day, they walked past that statue, resisting the temptation to raise their fingers to lips and heart – the now-banned sign to dispel evil. The statue stood there during their birthdays, festivals, markets and funerals. It almost seemed to mock them – a caricature of the once most loathed man in the known world, face forever twisted in a rictus of pain and fury, as his flesh became stone, and his dark armies scattered like leaves before the storm.

The villagers eventually stopped talking about the statue altogether – a silent, unspoken agreement. They stopped thinking about it, until it was nothing but a darker shade of black in their minds. They did not tell their children about it; when asked about it, they either remained silent or refused to acknowledge its existence.

The villagers, in their endeavour to prevent the statue from unearthing fear, went too far. They erased all knowledge of the statue within thirty years, and any stigma attached to it was gone.

They forgot.

They forgot what that statue represented, and their oath to defend it from the world and the world from it, uttered by their ancestors before the Demi-King himself. They forgot about the raw hatred and malice contained within that stone. They forgot its power, and how close they teetered, on the edge of doom. They forgot about a seething madness, and a crazed, single-minded thirst for the destruction of all they held dear in the world.

They forgot Tristan.

– Part Two –

Vikatachi Prall crouched in the shadows of the alley, squinting out into the darkness of the night. He sniffed, and wrinkled his nose at the thick stench of mud and decay. It was cold, and the cold was a sour taste on his tongue. Somewhere, sheep bleated softly in their sleep, and rotting trees groaned in the wind.

Vikatachi slunk from the tree line, eyes straining as he scanned the space before him.

A statue stood at one end of a small, dilapidated village. The entire area around it had slowly begun to fall apart; the plants died, the animals grew thin, and houses fell in. People still lived here – far fewer than the founding of the village. The rest had left or died.

The statue remained as it had always been – cold, indifferent and resolute. Time and the elements had worn it rough. As Vikatachi laid his hands upon its shoulders, he took a deep, shuddering breath, and began to whisper. His voice was hoarse and his words were alien, both from disuse.

'Forgive me, lord, forgive poor Vikatachi Prall…he only wishes to do your bidding…forgive his pride, forgive him for daring to think he is as good as the sacred dirt at your great feet…'

Vikatachi withdrew a piece of wood from his pocket, and clamped his teeth down on it. Then he drew his knife, and lowered it to his wrist. With a whimper, he carved a deep gash in his flesh. The piece of wood, two centimetres thick, snapped in his mouth. The man squealed in pain, clutching his arm. He desperately leaned forward, and let his pumping blood smear over the statue's face.

It was too much for him. Vikatachi Prall, now the second most dangerous man in the world, dropped to his knees in equal parts supplication and terror before his waking master.

Deadwaker,

Earthkiller,

Kinslayer,

The Supreme Shouldhavebeen,

The Death Hungerer,

Tristan,

Tristan,

The man who nearly Killed,

Tristan.