His stomach growled again and reminded him of his hunger as he was heading for the city. The guards at the gate were now the only thing standing between him and his destination. If they caught him trying to sneak in they would throw him in prison or execute him on the spot, depending on the guard. Things had gotten very strict in the past few years. He found a place behind a tree about a hundred meters from the gate, from where he could see the gate but the guards couldn’t see him. Only a passing rabbit noticed him and quickly ran away. He tried to carefully observe them.

There were only two guards at the gate, which was about four meters wide, and no people looking to enter. The one standing at the right side of the gate was a short man with a big mustache who was using his spear as a support to keep him in an upright position, clearly bored, and his stomach was probably stopping him from seeing his feet. The one on the left was a skinny man with long arms who was trying to seem like he was on guard, but was probably as bored as his partner. They both looked like they would be easy to fool, so he wouldn’t have to circle around to the other gate of the town. He didn’t have the energy to do that anyway. Now all he had to do was wait for one of them to leave his post. He moved closer to the gate to be ready. He didn’t have to wait long.

“Hey Seb”, said the skinny guard, “I have to pee. Hold my post for a bit”.

“Take your time Ned, it’s not like many people come around”.

The short guard, Seb, sighed and got ready for the endless hordes of boredom that were coming his way. Then, he saw a boy holding his left eye closed with his hand and running his way. He placed his hand above his eyes to see the boy better, without that annoying sun blinding him. He seemed about sixteen years old, close to the age when he would have to join the army. His clothes looked well-made, but they were very dirty and the boy himself looked like he really needed a bath. He wasn’t what one would call muscular, but he didn’t look that weak either. He had black hair, his height was a little above average for his age and he had longish arms. He had a few pimples around his face but nothing that stood out. His chin and his mouth, however, suggested a strong character and a man you wouldn’t want to be up against, and his eye looked sharp, like an eagle’s. His nose was a little crooked, something you usually only find in royal bloodlines. He instinctively corrected his pose. This wasn’t your usual commoner’s kid, even though it looked like it had been through a lot.

“Mr. Seb, Mr. Seb” yelled the kid.  “Let me pass, I have to see the doctor right away!”

Now that he was closer, Seb could see that the boy’s face was like he was in pain but trying not to show it. He also noticed an unpleasant smell coming from him. Then he saw that the color of the boy’s eyes was blue.

“Now, hold it there. There are some formalities we need to abide by. What’s your name?”

“There's no time! My father was teaching me how to chop wood when his axe fell on his foot and broke it. I tried to run here as fast as I could but I fell three times and injured my eye on a tree branch. Please, you must let me pass and get the doctor right away”.

Seb thought about it. The boy had the face and the clothes of a noble, and he had manners, since he called him "Mr. Seb". He called him by his name so he must know him. If this really was an emergency, he wouldn’t want to leave a noble waiting in the woods with a broken foot while he delays his son with some meaningless formalities. In fact, this could be his chance to earn the favor of someone important, someone who could get him out of this boring post. He smiled under his mustache. How lucky he was that Ned had gone to pee at this exact moment!

“Yes, of course. Hurry inside and get the doctor as fast as you can. I will go tend to your father, the other guard will be here to cover my post in a minute. Where is he?”

“He is about five hundred meters that way” said the boy pointing at a random direction in the woods, as he was running through the gate. “Thank you, Mr. Seb”.

He ran until he got past the first few buildings, then he turned to a corner and stopped to catch his breath. That guard was even easier than he thought. If after all that trading training he received from his father he couldn’t fool someone like that then he wouldn’t have deserved to live thanks to the sacrifice of his parents. But anyway, now he was inside the walls and he had to sort out his priorities. First he had to find some food, then some water and a place to sleep. After that, he could steal to survive. He had practiced a lot with the other kids at the village, so he thought he could keep that up for a while. But then what? He hadn’t really given it much thought. He always had surviving in mind until now, and his dreams of becoming a merchant and traveling around with his father were long gone.

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“Oh well” he thought, “I’m still hungry”.

The prices in Daybreak were higher than those in Aldmark, his village, so the money he had on him were barely enough to buy a loaf of bread from the market. He kept his left eye closed while he was walking among other people, so his blue stare prevented people from asking many questions. After he got his bread, he went to an alley near the center of the town to eat it quietly. Now that he was alone, he could safely open his other eye as well. No one would see his brown left eye.

After he got his stomach to stay quiet, he felt like a big weight had been on him for days and had now been lifted. He could think clearly, so he started planning ahead. He had almost no money on him and unless he wanted to spend the night on some alley, he would have to get some. He also had to find more food and water. Memories were trying to worm their way into his thoughts but he forcefully kept them away.

“Pick pocketing it is then”.

He decided that that was all he needed to think for now and he went to the market, his eyes half-closed so nobody would notice their color, in search of an easy victim to test his skills on. It took him less than ten seconds to spot an old man with a big pocket, alone in the crowd. He looked distracted, thinking about something that was not of any interest to the one carefully closing in on him from behind, being careful to make it look as if he wasn’t interested in that old man at all. It wasn’t like anyone was looking at him, but sometimes people have a sixth sense about such things. He went close to the old man and pretended to trip and fall on him before quickly regaining his balance. Meanwhile, he swiftly put his hand in the old man’s pocket and dragged out what was inside, before altering his course to get away from him as fast as possible.

But something was off. Everyone was staring at him and he could see a strange light coming from his hands, or rather from what was in his hands. He tried to take a better look at what he had gotten from the old man, but when he turned his eyes on what seemed like a bag with something very shiny inside it, that something was engulfed by a light as bright as the sun, which devoured the bag and made his consciousness fade into darkness.

When he came to, he thought fast enough to avoid instinctively opening his eyes. He remembered what had happened and concluded that he was in a dire situation. He was lying on a bed, which meant that he was in somebody’s house. And the chances were greatly against that somebody being his friend. His hands were not tied though, and neither were his legs.

“I know you are awake, little friend” sounded a deep voice, filled with wisdom and kindness. “There is nothing to be afraid of. You can open your eyes”.

He opened his eyes, already convinced that whoever was in that room with him meant him no harm, or he would at the very least be tied up. He wasn’t surprised to see that the one who had spoken to him was the old man he had tried to rob. He was pretty tall and he was leaning above the bed, his face close to the boy’s face. His eyes seemed intense, but kind, and he looked a lot older than he appeared at the market. His nose was long, but he must have been a handsome man in his youth. He had a mustache that went from one cheek to the other and was a little curly at the edges, and his beard was so long he could probably wrap it around his neck. All of his shoulders-long hair was pure white. His face didn’t have as many wrinkles as one would expect, and his hands implied that he hadn’t done almost any manual labor in his entire life. The clothes he was wearing were strange now that he could see them up close, they looked like they were made by many tiny strings tied together by someone with inhumane patience and precision. For a while they stood there and looked at each other, each impressed by the other one. The old man seemed fascinated by the eyes of the boy, the left being brown and the right being blue. It was the boy’s first time seeing a magician.

“I am Ashter, a magician. It is nice to meet you, young Arknas. What is your name?”

What did he call him? The boy briefly tried to remember whether Arknas was a curse word, but came up empty. And what did he ask for? His name? He hadn’t thought about that in what seemed like ages, so it took him a second to recall it.

“Vreil. My name is Vreil Light”.