Since the day man first put ink to paper, the House of Kantazoukenes had been compared to a forest fire, a relentless conflagration engulfing everything in its path, knowing no pause and acknowledging no master but the cold kiss of death.
Even before they rose to claim the purple cloak, when they were but a vassal house to the Mazkei, they were a house of marrow and iron, a martial line that bred conquerors. Then, the hound became the master, and Romelia became a leviathan that swallowed half the known world whole.
But Tiberius was no Kantazoukenes. Not truly. Half his blood was "tainted" by a commoner's womb, and in the eyes of the high-born, a bastard was the shame of the father.
So, what was he doing here?
He sat upon a weathered wooden stump, hunched over a fire that cackled with greedy, orange tongues, rising to challenge the oppressive darkness of the night.
He wondered that same question himself.
