My name is Stavros.
Yeah, I know—it's weird. I've been told that my whole life.
You see, my dad's name was Theron. His dad's name was Erythas. And his dad's name was Kastoionr. Weird enough? It goes on and on like that, each name older and harder to pronounce than the last.
When I was seven, I finally asked my mother why. She looked at me with eyes both kind and serious, the kind that seemed to hold centuries in them.
"Our family keeps the old ways," she said. "We are Keepers, Stavros. Our duty is to pass on history so it is never forgotten—even in names."
I didn't really understand back then. But somehow, her words made the teasing sting a little less. At least the names meant something.
My father died when I was four. My mother followed last year. She left me only two things: a map and a key.
The map led to our ancestral home, a place I'd only heard about in bedtime stories. The key opened the basement.
It was nothing like I expected. The air was thick with dust and silence. Shelves lined the stone walls, crammed with books, scrolls, and letters bound in faded ribbon. There were odd trinkets, broken seals, and rusted tools whose purpose I couldn't guess. On a central table lay a single letter, addressed in my mother's hand.
I opened it carefully, and her voice seemed to echo in the quiet.
"Here are the stories passed to your father, and to his father before him, and before him still.
Now they are yours, my dear Stavros. Do not let them die.
Do as we have done for you; remember."
I sat there for a long time, the weight of her words, of the mountains of scrolls and books, crashing down on me.
Names, stories, deeds—they all matter.
They live only if someone remembers.
And I… I am that someone.
I began to go through the pages. They tell of a time when kingdoms rose and fell, when loyalty and betrayal danced in equal measure, and when ordinary people shaped extraordinary fates.
And so begins the tale my ancestors entrusted to me. A tale about a peculiar set of people. A tale the Keepers before me called The War for Hasteron.