Cal laid on the forest floor staring at the words that were floating above his head. He wasn’t reading them over and over just sitting and staring at them. When he finally worked up the will to read it again it felt like each word was a knife stabbing into his chest.

[Threynar Windlab has broken his promise to “survive and come find you”]

he knew what it had to mean, his grandfather was dead. There was no other possible explanation. After a minute or so the words faded away and cal was left staring up into the sky. He felt tears running down his face and wondered when he had started to cry.

Cal thought about his last moments with his grandpa and what his grandpa had said about the necklace. He sat up and took off the necklace. Upon closer inspection, it still looked like an ordinary red and black rope but his grandpa had said that it was a spatial artifact which meant that it had an extra-dimensional space inside of it. Cal started trying a variety of methods to open it but none of them had any results.

Cal stood up and looked around. By checking the sun’s position in the sky he realized it was still before noon so not much time had passed since he had been sent here. He then checked his surroundings for any landmarks, but he didn’t hold much hope; he had rarely gone more than twenty miles away from the village, and most of those times had been week-long training expeditions where he had to survive in the woods alone. So he had rarely been on any trails that weren't close to his village.

Cal tried to calm himself down and thought through his situation He was lost in the middle of the woods. The forest that his village was in is called the kaar forest and is about 200 square miles. The village had been about five miles into the forest so if he was a hundred miles away from his village he could be near the center of the forest or by its outskirts depending on which direction he had been teleported and without any landmarks to guide him he had no way of knowing where he was.

There could be awakened beasts or even true monsters. Many didn’t know the distinction but awakened beasts are normal animals that managed to awaken they are stronger and live longer than normal animals and some can gain abilities by leveling up. monsters, however, are born with the ability to level up and often have natural abilities and are often considered to be much more dangerous.

Cal looked over himself to see what he had. He wasn’t wearing shoes. Having woken up less than an hour ago. He was wearing fairly well-made clothes so he would be fine until it got cold if he was still lost by then, and he had the ring and necklace.

“Only an awakened should be this deep in the forest” he quietly said to himself.

Upon saying the word awakened, he felt an odd stirring in his chest. It eventually faded but came back even stronger once he thought about it again. He could feel something in his mind and tried to grab hold of it. As if on cue a translucent blue screen appeared in front of him.

Health 302/302

Mana 70/70

Stamina 152/154

Name: Calaeris Windlab

Race: Winterwraith

Name: Kelaris

Race: Windwalker

Name: Calee-aris

Race: frost Spirit

Skills:

[Archery: 25] [Small blade: 17] [Forestry: 12] [Swords: 22] [Pain tolerance: 7] [Acting: 9]

Abilities:

[ice magic:max] [cold immunity:max] [flurry:max] [water magic:max] [wind magic:max] [feather weight:max] [shadow magic:max] [corporeal shadow:max] [fire immunity:max]

Spells:

None

Class slot (empty)

Class slot (empty)

Class slot (empty)

Class slot (empty)

Familiar slot (empty)

Familiar slot (empty)

Familiar slot (empty)

Familiar slot (empty)

Stats:

Strength: 11

Endurance: 14

Dexterity: 13

Wisdom: 13

Spirit: 12

Intelligence: 14

The first thing that cal noticed was the repetition of his name and race. The fact that it repeated was fairly confusing to him. It just didn't make sense that he would not only have multiple names but also multiple races. After all, How could he be more than one person?

Despite what he thought his status couldn’t lie it was something his grandfather had repeatedly drummed into him “a person’s status cannot lie so if it was said on it it had to be true.” The second thing he noticed was all the empty slots. He wasn't sure what class and familiar slots were but he felt like it might be a good idea to try to fill them as soon as possible.

He decided to leave them alone for now and once again took off his necklace and started to study it again. Now that he had opened his status, this also became easier, and after a few seconds a window popped up.

[would you like to bond to oathbreakers necklace (soulbound) yes or no]

upon answering yes, cal felt an odd connection in his mind. It reminded him of the feeling that having his status gave him except it was somehow artificial. He tried willing something to appear from the connection, and suddenly he stood in a small room that was roughly eight feet long and wide and about seven feet tall. The walls and ceiling were made of wood, while the floor was made of stones.

Around him, there was a bookshelf with half a dozen books on it. Next to the bookshelf, there was a desk and chair with a pile of papers a black quill, a bottle of ink, and a letter on top of it. Those only took up one side of the room on the other side of the room, there was a small mattress about two feet wide and six across with a package laying on it. Next to the mattress lay a pile of equipment almost identical to was Cal's grandfather had trained him with.

Cal quickly walked over and opened the letter and carefully read through it. “Cal, if you are reading this, it means I am no longer with you and you have opened your status, well done. The weapons are the same as the ones I had trained you with up til now, so use them until you find better equipment.

“The bookshelf is probably the most important thing left to you. Never take the books out of this room unless you are certain that no one will see you reading them. There are ten of them the first two detail how I should have trained you until you were about fifteen and opened your status.

“One of them explains everything that I knew about statuses. The fourth is a list of skills that you can learn on your own you don’t need to learn all of them, but learning a few could be useful. The fifth one is a world quest what that is will be explained in the third book, but make sure to complete it I never had the chance to, but the rewards for doing so should be amazing. The last one is my life story it is less important but I would like someone to know about the life of threynar.

“I love you grandson. I'm sure that when I give this to you I will wish I could have put more in this letter but right now you are only six and putting this much here already feels like I’m being paranoid. I’m hoping I can pass it on to you in a more peaceful time and if I do so you probably won’t even read this letter. Love you, grandpa.

“P.s. if I ended up giving you the two potions you will need to know what they did so here it is the first one is the potion of doubling it doubles every number in your status. the other one forcibly awakens anyone, so if I gave you the second one I am most likely dead, so I hope you can survive the repercussions of being forcibly awakened. I’ll explain about that in the third book too so you need to read that.”

Cal stood there for a minute then carefully set the paper down and sat on the mattress. He looked up at the ceiling with tears running down his face. He had been avoiding thinking about his grandpa's death but this letter brought all those buried emotions out into the light.

“Why did this have to happen?” Cal whispered into the empty room.

He sat there quietly for a second then screamed “WHY DID THIS HAPPEN”

He hunched over crying his heart out. He remembered all of his favorite memories of his grandpa. The song about the bullfrog that he’d sing whenever it rained. Or when he would wake, cal up a little earlier so they could watch the sunrise together. The tradition of telling Cal the story of how his grandpa had found him every year on his birthday.

Cal kept crying, desperately, trying to remember all of the memories he had of his grandpa and trying to burn them into his memory. He suddenly remembered that one of the books was a diary. Cal numbly stood up and walked over to the shelf. He quickly read through the titles until he found the diary and started reading it.

“Well the date is October 12 in the 407th year of the era of mages, yesterday I got married to my beautiful wife Anne who is currently forcing me to write this for you. whether you are my own child or a grandchild I hope you enjoy this.”

As cal continued to read he could almost hear his grandpa talking about how beautiful the ceremony was and how he was the luckiest man in the world to get to marry his Anne. After about two pages he ended his first entry. To cals shock, the date at the top of the next entry was nearly sixty years later as he scanned the page he noticed small watermarks up and down the paper, and after reading its contents he felt a smoldering rage growing in his chest.

“My dear Anne, I’m so sorry I couldn’t save you. This is addressed to any future readers you will not be my progeny for my line has died out, but I will tell you the story of how my beautiful wife Anne and my wonderful daughter Alicia were murdered, and how my liege the king of kilayen a man I considered to be my closest friend is to blame.

“It was during the last war between Arbolin and kilayen after the battle of the red bridge where I personally defeated a thousand soldiers along with one of the arbolins heroes, Prince Michael, the king of arbolin, who was in the depths of despair after his son died, proposed a deal with my leige. If my leige agreed to allow a level seal to be placed on me the king of arbolin would end the war.

“My king hastily agreed but in his haste, he didn’t consider that I wanted the war to end even more than he did and would probably have accepted the deal if I had been aware. But my king did not do that instead he and the king of arbolin laid a trap using my wife and pregnant daughter as bait. My king told me that they had been captured by arbolin and I rushed to save them.

“upon arriving I was set upon by both kings and an elite squad which I had personally trained to be of use to my king. I could have easily killed them all but I couldn’t do that to my king and I didn’t want to put my family in danger by fighting so close to them. so I let them constrain me and the king of arbolin used a cursed item. after its use, it faded into dust and I had lost 438 levels.

“That should have been the end of it but this was not enough for the wicked king of arbolin so after removing the cumulation of centuries of work from me. he turned and murdered the two people I cared for most in the world. I watched as my wonderful, beautiful Anne was decapitated and I stared into her shocked horror-filled eyes as her head rolled towards me. next, I watched that terrible vile man stab my sweet daughter, who held my only grandchild in her womb, through the stomach.

“My king killed that man a moment later but the damage had already been done everyone I truly loved in this world had either been killed or betrayed me. my king asked for my forgiveness and offered me everything he could from treasure to noble rank.

“I wanted none of it. The last words I ever said to him were that I would like my family back but I would settle for your head on a platter. I then walked away and he didn't try to stop me. I kept on walking for miles on end but even exhaustion and dehydration couldn’t stop the pain in my heart.''

Cal's body was shaking and his face was twisted into a look of pure wrath. With shaky hands, he turned the page, and suddenly, as quickly as it had come, the burning rage left him, leaving behind a feeling of loneliness that seemed to chill cal down to his core. He recognized this next story. Cal wiped away the tears that had come to his eyes as he started reading once again.

“I was out hunting in the woods one day in the middle of December. It had been an early winter so many families were not prepared, so I ended up giving out what I had and hunting for myself. I was tracking a herd of deer which I had been following for several hours when suddenly the worst blizzard I had ever seen blew in.

“By that time I had lived in greenwood for nearly a century and could easily traverse the forest without my eyes, so I started heading back in the direction from where I had come. the blizzard got gradually worse until it was to the point that I could not see my hand in front of my face I kept walking when I suddenly heard a babes cry.

“I thought that I must have imagined it so I kept walking until I heard it again but this time it was much quieter and so I frantically started searching. I stumbled around in the blizzard searching for what I thought was a lost family. After all, it would have been impossible for an infant to make it this far into the woods on its own.

“I was about to give up because I had stopped hearing the cries for a few minutes. when suddenly there was a gap in the blizzard it was only there for an instant but I clearly saw a small bundle with blued fingers poking out of it next to the child there was a wooden box.

I walked over and with shaking hands picked up the child it was thankfully still breathing and even reached out to me with its frostbitten hands I rocked it for a bit. it suddenly stopped moving and my heart nearly broke. I thought that all I had been able to do was give the babe comfort iI its final moments but I then noticed the gentle rise and fall of his chest and my heart rekindled.

“I decided then that I would raise the boy I picked up the box that he had been lying next to and ran as fast as I could home. Upon unwrapping the child I saw that all his fingers and toes had been frostbitten but not even half as bad as they should have been so I treated him as best I could and put him in my bed. I quietly watched him as he slept even now I am sitting next to him while writing this.

“I can’t help but marvel at his white hair the same color as the snow and for that brief moment when he had been awake, I saw the most beautiful blue eyes. I think I will call him calaeris. in the language of samellan, it would translate calae to winters and ris to son I found it fitting considering where he came from. Yes calaeris windlab that is a fitting name”

Cal closed the book and carefully set it on the shelf. He then walked over to the mattress and pushed off the package he heard a wooden thunk, but he didn’t much care as he laid down and stared at the roof. He wasn’t crying anymore he just felt hollow now as if nothing much mattered anymore.

he idly wondered about what he had just read. His grandpa had told him the story of how he had been found once a year on his birthday for as long as cal could remember but there were a few spots that were different in the book than from what he had been told. for instance, he had never heard about the box he had been with nor had he heard about the meaning of his name or the language of samellan. With those thoughts whirling in his head, he fell asleep.