Chapter 1
The Fugitive.
A man was sprinting across a snowfield so white it hurt to look at.
Three figures chased closely behind.
An arrow, loosed from a taut bowstring, pierced the fleeing man's leg with precision. His body crumpled. He rolled once across the snow and sprang up quickly to run again, but his pace was clearly slower now.
The slowing fugitive was soon caught.
Alguor Kingdom's senior ranger, Lagil, roughly kicked the man's back. At last, the long chase of the past few days had reached its end.
This fugitive had fled without hardly sleeping, sprinting through the snow-covered northern forest for three days at a pace rivaling even the elite rangers of the northern kingdom. He was a born ranger, through and through.
Lagil looked down at the fallen man and drew the longsword from his belt. The cold whisper of steel echoed in the snowy silence.
But unfortunately, this man was a fugitive who had stolen a sacred relic of the Holy Flame Church. The order from above was clear: retrieve the relic and take the man's head.