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Tonight it was raining very hard. The sky was like torn. The clouds were so dark that it looked like night. The still tall grass was blown down by the wind and probably by hail.

A dark couple walked across the hill, their backs to the valley of their village Cove further south. Soon the grasses were replaced by rocks and boulders and it became even darker now that huge fir trees lined the hillside leading to the mountain range.

The place they were going to was not a happy place.

The gravel road gave way to narrower and narrower paths, and any possible carting activity stopped here.

Side-by-side stone shelters allowed the traveler or merchant a possible respite but it was also dangerous because it could be a den for highwaymen but the two individuals, a muscular man with a Viking-like beard and armed with an axe and a crossbow, were escorting his wife. They were protected from the wind and the rain by a simple cloth waterproofed with grease.

Indeed, Britannia was a magnificent world where the best could be next to the worst but the continent was almost unified and wars were a memory of grandparents.

It was exceptional to have a period of peace over 2 generations.

In general a man lived (or survived) 4 wars in his life.

Technology and science were at the same level as the ancient Roman Empire in our world.

The legend said that sometimes, when the moon aligned, in circles of sacred stones, luminous doors appeared from the ground and allowed to cross the whole continent instantly but also to go to the inner world and sometimes even to our world.

Ragul and Esme still remembered the words of the wise women and diviners. At that time they were in a kind of wooden trailer with a room made of greasy cloth and hoops. The Gypsy woman, she called herself.

"The gods have not blessed you with a child, but they will give you a gift of incalculable value. You will be blessed with a child who will become very strong and who one day may even become a hero and rival the gods if he is well guided. The signs are powerful but real. If your heart is sincere and filled with love, then our land will be blessed but if not, then I see only darkness."

Then a few moments later: "You must leave... Now. To the cursed mountain. To the north, near the eternal snows.

A tragedy is unfolding now, but you MUST go without missing a beat...Beware the Shadows, for I see death lurking. But I see in you an experienced former soldier. You will make it!"

And so the pair hurried up the path to the cursed mountain.

This name was attributed to the fact that there would be a dungeon or underground guarded by hideous monsters and they would be passages to another world. Where few humans could claim to have arrived.

Yet museums in Britannia City protect a whole series of relics and artifacts and engravings and paintings describing this wild and unknown world. It was not a myth but a certainty.

Nobody in Ragul's entourage knew the location or the entrance to this hell, but he was not interested. This was the mission of their lives, the last chance to start a family.

The chance to be a father and a mother.

The simple life was still hard.

With alert instincts, Ragul held back his half with an outstretched arm and put his finger on his wife's lips in view of the urgency of not making noise.

A fox walking quickly towards them without paying attention was a bad sign.

"Quickly! we must climb the trees and not leave anything on the ground. "

He felt the wind and pointed to a large, tall fir tree facing the wind.

"By Thor the Destroyer!" and he climbed up, helping his wife to climb high up on the slippery branches of the dying fir, very tall, too tall.

And his intuition paid off: a sharp-horned moose ran down the path, followed by a pack of whining wolves.

Ragul: "I've never seen that," he whispered to his wife, frightened by the height. They were hidden between the green branches, straddling for stability, but they were well over 20 meters high.

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And, suddenly, a distant howl to freeze to the bones of an ice troll.

It was a furious beast and the mountain was shaking, then we heard some crying and finally silence.

Drops fell among the raindrops. And Esme looked at Ragul! "You are bleeding!

And he rubbed his face and felt the drops of blood and saw in the mists a huge mass flying and whining away to the west towards other mountain ranges.

Then... there was silence. A dead silence and darkness fell heavily on the region.

And... like a screech, then growls...

A series of small red dots jumped along the path, on the side of the mountain, and the two humans huddled like animals, like squirrels trying to escape a predator, could see a pack of black dogs, their tails ablaze!

Worg or wolves from the underworld. Each was the size of a large pony and one of them could take out five strong men. At least!

A dozen of them marched on and then went up to the fork, leading further up the mountain.

Ragul nodded and the girl went from sadness to fear and from fear to despair.

But...then...he saw black silhouettes with eyes as red as hell embers and they were shadows, darkness. But above all, they were giants. At least 50 feet tall and moving silently, as if they were floating.

The wolves probably had to check if the road was safe, but what struck Ragul was the lifeless body, floating at chest level of one of these giant ghosts.

He was wearing a crown.

His cloak floating, like his arms flailing and his legs flaccid, the tall figure was floating as if suspended by an invisible tray.

It looked as if he was sleeping.

But Ragul recognized his sovereign. Our king; our beloved king.

Lord British! The Lord of Britannia!

The spectres slid noiselessly along the path and the two humans even tried to hide their souls.

One of the figures turned his head slightly from the cloak towards the former soldier, but he kept his eyes closed, his forehead against the prickly bark of the fir tree. So did his wife.

The monsters did not stop and disappeared just as they appeared.

For this couple, they had met 3 reapers.... It was a lot but also a sign that the soothsayer Gitane had not lied.

Feeling the normal sound of the forest coming back, they relaxed a bit and little by little they went down the trunk.

"Ragul..!!! I was so scared... do you know what it is?"

"I have no idea... but if they hurt what I think they did, then they must be very strong! "

"Ragul? Are you going to warn the guards?"

"Are you crazy? Imagine if they were in the service of those monsters, now that they have the king...our heads will be worthless...and...I have a bad feeling about the years to come.."

They drank from a small stream and continued on their way, as if guided by destiny.

"Ragul? Do you know where we are going?"

"I feel that I have to go ahead and we have to know what happened! We have to continue as the Gypsy woman predicted."

Half an hour later, they arrived at a rocky slope of the mountain, at the foot of precipices that climbed very high.

They were afraid when they saw the steep path. Barely a meter wide along a vertical wall, they were sure to fall if they took a wrong step.

Then Esme pointed: No, not this path of death... look further, there is a recess.

Then they heard screams.

Esme put her hands in front of her mouth. One of many screams.

They started to run, hoping not to be too late.

And they saw a baby engulfed in a kind of viscous fat. Next to a torn egg with blood all around...

"By Thor! What is he doing here?"

Immediately, the woman grabbed the baby and began to wipe it off and secure it in a cloth provided for that purpose.

Oddly enough, the umbilical cord was connected to a sort of torn pouch... as if the placenta had come out of the pouch.

Above the cave that was sinking into the darkness, there was a symbol. That of the God of destruction... A 5-sided polygon with a pickaxe but it was a stylized dragon.

The baby held a huge white scale in his hand and chewed on the object like a toy.

The parents shouted to know where the parents of the newborn were but there was no answer.

Esme and Ragul looked at each other and then knelt before the symbol of the terrifying God.

Ragul would never have expected such a gift, moreover, coming from a deity whose name was pronounced to curse or swear.

He was the god of the end of times, the one who would put an end to Britannia.

Looking at his son. Ragul said: "My son, you will be called Torin because Thor is too heavy to carry".

Then, he brandished the newborn towards the symbol.

"God of destruction, may you bless our son to you and to us: Torin!

Then the days became weeks and the weeks became months.

The life of a peasant was good: the lords changed and passed away but the serfs and peasants remained.

Some years were good and others not so good, but Ragul sometimes compensated the shortage by hunting.

And the rumors came from the city through the troubadours and peddlers. The king had abdicated and put in place his successor, Lord Blackthorne.

And as times change, so do politics, so there was a major reshuffle in the guard and army.

Little by little, brigands and bandits reappeared on the roads and the once radiant country was a shadow of its former self. A shadow in short. Taxes were raised and there was even talk of a revolt and a new country dreaming of conquering Britannia.

It is then that the troubadours, to raise the morale of the people and the villagers, sang odes where heroes covered with virtues would drive out the corruption and the 3 fallen angels who took Lord British.

Officially, Lord British, ill, had abdicated but nobody was fooled. The current ruler was not a ruler at all but a tyrant.

This made Esme and Ragul feel cold every time. They thought that they had been discovered.

But at home, it was like an island of light in all this darkness.

They finally had a family. There were three of them, three happy people.

Then the months became years and Ragul spent all his free time learning and teaching the art of hunting and fishing to Torin.

In the village, there was a school and 4 years later, Torin was running alone from the house to the village temple where, sheltered from the weather, the old priest was teaching the children the history of our world and preparing them to learn to read thanks to beautiful painted wooden tablets showing people doing something and words to be learned.