The marked children were not born every day. Their arrival came in waves, synchronized with something no one understood the pulsing of the Violent Moon, perhaps, or the deep rhythms of the wounded world itself. Across all ten kingdoms, in a single night, dozens of women would go into labor, and dozens of infants would open their eyes to reveal colors no human should possess.
Violet. Amber. Silver. Deep ocean blue. Swirling granite grey. And rarest of all two different colors, one in each eye, a condition the villagers called "the Split Gaze" and whispered about with particular dread.
The midwives learned to recognize the signs. They would clean the newborn, wrap it in cloth, and then with trembling hands lift it toward the light. If the eyes glowed, even faintly, they would scream. And the screaming would begin the chain of events that ended with knights at the door.
In the first wave after the Decree, over two hundred marked children were born across the Ten Kingdoms. Half were killed within days drowned in rivers, abandoned on hillsides, thrown into the Pits of Exil where they were left to starve in darkness. The other half were taken by the knights.
Some of those were killed more formally: burned in the great iron pyres of Ashenvale, tossed into the churning sea by the knights of Stormvale, thrown into the deep canyon known as the Shadow Gorge by the soldiers of Obsidian Hold. Each kingdom had its own preferred method of purification, and each method was more horrific than the last.
But the special ones the ones with the most vibrant eyes, or the Split Gaze, or other strange signs that marked them as different even among the marked were not killed.
They were taken to the Sanctuary of Studies.
— ✦ —