They say the All-Father was never born.
That he simply appeared one day at the edge of the world, standing in the mud and blood of a war that had no business producing gods.
I've heard every version of the story. The one where I descended from the Gate itself. The one where I was a demon wearing a soldier's face. The one where the gods of Cronyn made me and then immediately regretted it.
They are all wrong.
The truth is less flattering. I was cold. I was hungry. I had seventeen years of someone else's memories sitting in my skull like furniture I hadn't chosen, and a name no one had bothered to give me. The war didn't care. The United Front didn't care. The nobles watching from their warm tents certainly didn't care.
Commoners didn't get graves on Cronyn. They got a number if they were lucky, a ditch if they weren't.
I had no intention of becoming either.
What I did intend - in those first brutal weeks when survival was the only strategy I had - I'll leave for the story itself to explain. Some things make no sense told forward. You have to live them the long way.
But I'll tell you this much.
Every nation that wanted me dead is gone now.
Every gate has a key.
And the mud I was standing in when it all began?
I still remember exactly how it felt under my boots.
- Recorded in the First Volume of the All-Father's Testimony,Cronyn Calendar Year Unknown