It was a common enough story. In his twelfth year, he and a small group of kids from the village had gone against the adults’ wishes and went adventuring in the nearby forest. Predictably, they had gotten lost, and as they were trying to retrace their footsteps, they discovered the carcass of a deer buried in a pile of snow.

They should’ve left then, but because they were kids, they were filled with an innocent but morbid curiosity. They poked its head with a stick. They gagged at the entrails that were exposed by the deep cut running down its body, and they giggled at how it had defecated upon its death. One of the boys vomited from the sight and stench of the gore, and the other kids made fun of him.

And that’s when the bear came back to check on its prey. It was unknown how it happened, but some beasts could become deformed. They would grow into aberrations of nature that only experienced troops or a paladin could handle. This bear was no such monster. It was just a normal bear. But they were just a normal group of peasant children. They stood no chance.

The deer had been a warning of what was to come. He could remember it in horrifying flashes sometimes: a boy, crying and calling for his mother, was slumped against a tree, his arm bent in a way that seemed to imitate the gnarled tree branch above him. Another boy lay in a pool of his own blood and feces, a dark stain on the melting white snow. One girl, after the bear’s claw had swiped at her face, had been running down the hill with him, but her vision was obscured by blood and tears, and she tripped and slid to the bottom; afterward, when they went looking for her body, they couldn’t find her head.

The bishops had told him that a paladin awakens to his powers when he is in a situation of great distress and must call upon the Lord for help. Roel was sure that second half was just something made up for the religious texts, but he couldn’t confirm nor deny the claim. He didn’t remember much other than the fear as the bear continued to chase him. He wanted to run faster, and suddenly he did. A golden aura was covering his legs, and he was so running so quickly down the hill that he almost crashed into a tree.

For a moment, he just stood at the foot of that hill in utter bemusement. But then he knew. He had grown up on stories of the Divine Paladins, the heroes who valiantly risked their lives to protect Calorin. Kids believed themselves to be the centers of their own universes, and his younger self didn’t find it incredible or terrifying that he had been granted this immense power. Of course, he had thought, of course I’ve been chosen.

Without a single doubt, he ran back up the hill, coating his entire body with the golden aura, and inexpertly threw a punch at the bear’s snout. The bear recoiled, roaring in pain, and Roel grabbed the bear by its right flank and threw it down the hill. The bear’s body flew for a moment until it crashed into a dead tree with a thunderous cracking sound. It was that easy.

But the encounter with the bear wasn’t what had cemented his fate. Nor was it getting lost in the forest with his friends. After all, it’s possible that if he didn’t awaken his powers then, he might’ve awakened them later. What damned him was how he had acted after he had killed the bear.

The rescue squad, a ragtag group of farmers holding rusty swords and hatchets, arrived shortly after the fight. What they found was not just the corpses of the children, but Roel practicing his newfound powers, a bright smile on his face and bits of the bear’s fur and blood still stuck to his fingers from when he had grabbed its body. (The squad, he realized later, had found him so quickly because they had heard him felling trees with his bare hands.)

He had not even attempted to hide his powers or wait until later to reveal them. He had been boastful, almost triumphant in the way he showed them the Lord’s Favor, as if he had done something to earn it. Laughing, he coated his body in a golden aura so bright that it blinded him, and the cold bodies of his dead friends lay forgotten around him.

A few days later, a group of clergymen and soldiers arrived in his village. It was almost like he was a criminal being detained. As he was ushered away, his mom protested to the soldiers, his dad assured him that he was proud of him, and some of his siblings cried. At the time, Roel held no regrets. He was going to be a hero, he repeated to himself.

When he was older and revisited the memory, he became convinced: that moment of great hubris, his excitement over the idea of his own legend beginning, marked him as a sinner, and climbing the hill was to be his penance.