Sergei never really believed his grandfather's stories about where his family had come from. To hear the old man tell it, they were nobility, exiled long ago. The last remnants of the line sent away to save them from the madness of the second son that had killed the first born on his wedding day. The the firstborn's betrothed, the object of the second son's affections, was slain as well, but what the second son did not know was that she had already given birth to a child, who had been hidden away to protect the couple from the stain their bastard would bring to the family.
The purge went on, the second son seized control during a brutal civil war. The guardians of the child hid beneath the nose of the tyrant, pretending to be simple farmers. Their cover identities became their actual identities as generations passed, their fake farmstead expanding to become a full fledged community at the edge of the mist-shrouded wood. Centuries passed and the reign of the bloody tyrant faded to history and legend.
There, at the very border of the lands his grandfather said they had once owned, a young man growing up as a simple farmer listened to the impossible stories. They were never believed. It all changed when the old man died. On his death bed he gave the young man a key that opened an old chest. It's contents changed everything. Many things were in it, and together they were irrefutable. The young man was a heir to a long dead kingdom in a land now shrouded in mists.
Not that it mattered. He had responsibilities. A family. Work. Debts. Everything he'd had before he opened the damn chest he still had, and for years that was exactly the way he wanted it.
Then word that an ancient treasure, a powerful sword that had once belonged to the Tyrant's brother. This news brought the sword-hunters with it. They were little more than bandits armed with a writ from the lord to find and destroy the threat. They wanted money as "tribute", but there was none. They wanted food, and he gave it. It was when they wanted his wife that he drew the line. He killed three men that day. That night they came with twenty. He survived, but not much else did.
Months passed, recovering, rebuilding, crying, hating, drinking. It was the day he finally finished rebuilding the roof that he realized that it didn't mean anything anymore. Not as long as they could simply ride in and do it again. Something had to be done. There were supposed to be people to protect the ones that could not protect themselves. There was supposed to be justice.
The man who rode from that farmstead was not the man who had grown up there. Dimitri Farmer was dead. This new man was armed and armored in the colors of a kingdom unheard of for centuries. The line of Zarov was raised from antiquity. The sword had returned to the land, and with it, it's true owner.
