Something

In the temples of Kaulang, they had named it the Year of the Dragon. Upon the islands of Vestris it was the last of the years of Sorrow. Across the lands of the Once and Again Empire, it was the beginning of the Fourth Cycle. If you asked the renegade monks of Soltris, they would tell you that it was once more, - as it was every year - the year for repentance and grief, although, they said, men would have more to grieve now than ever before. To the shipwrights, sailors and those who followed the Book, it was to be a season of shifting weather and deceitful seas.

And to the common folk spread across the Hundred Isles, who tilled fields, mended thatch and fished the open waters, it was just another year, if unnaturally warm. But, if you looked close enough, and listened hard enough - in hushed tones in the corners of a dark tavern over tankards of half-devoured mead as late night crept toward early morning; along a dusty and dreary road as a pair men listened to the trees sing, touched their weapons reassuringly, and let slip the thoughts they had long kept inside; or at the bottom of a trade ship that had been at sea for too many days and the swaying of the waves led men to tell tales - you would hear it.

"Change is in the air." One of them would say. Their voice barely loud enough for those around them to hear, as if they feared that letting loose those words would cause them to come true. "Something is coming." Then someone would order another round of ale, or tell an overused joke, or pretend to see a shape in the distance. The moment would be broken, and they would all pretend it had never been said. But they would none of them forget.

For they felt it too. In subtle stirrings of the air, in the feel of the waves, in the early morning silence that said so little, and yet so much, they could feel something. And it mattered not what religion you turned to. Even the Relians, who claimed to hold to all gods, could find no reprieve. For all faiths told of a year of change, a year of new and old, a year of something.

So men toiled, and the days of a new year turned to weeks, which turned to months. Men began to breath a little easier, and to laugh at the quaint fears of their fellows. Some would even utter aloud their thoughts of these things for all to hear, and no one would care. At least for a time. But soon, dark and spiteful eyes would turn toward them. For no sooner, it seemed, were these words spoken, than the next wind would bring a ship, and the ship, as they tend to do, would bring news. News of something.

News of Lerial.