In the lonely silence before dawn, there walks a hermit. A wanderer, garbed in the attire of a friar: his tunic, made of thick cotton fabric, draping from his neck all the way to ground, his cowl covering most of his wrinkly face and a cord cincture fastened around his waist with three knots. His leather sandals bore the marks of his infinite and arduous journey. In his left hand he holds his cane carved out of the wood of the Mother’s Tree and in his right hand he carries an oil lamp, which banishes the night from around him while casting deep shadows into the furrows of his wrinkled old skin.
His venture started long before the Holy Empire was founded, though it is unclear when exactly he started searching and why. Crunching foliage and branches beneath his foot supplied the only sound the wise man ever knew, accompanying him in his sphere of illumination. During his lifetime he walked through the lands, offering his spiritual light to dispel chaos and darkness for those lost in it. He had never needed to guide anyone in the past, he had never dreamt about distant futures, his mind was totally occupied by the present, where he simply walked through life waiting for his duty to find him. Step by step, stumbling through the night into lands he did not know whom they belonged to, where they might lead, or where he even was. He only appears in the night and his scope was always contained to his small realm of light. Occasionally he would encounter wildlife, small rabbits hiding in their burrows of the forest, frogs disappearing into dark waters and sometimes he would see the magical and bizarre creatures which hid from man in the inaccessible corners of the land, like the rare type of frogs, which grew large mushrooms on their backs. The hermit was indifferent to all. His only responsibility was to take another step forward, he assumed, for eternity.
On one fateful night, the wise friar was walking through a pine forest in the night; the rain had softened the earth and wet the foliage. The smell of the earth, enhanced by the rain of the previous days, was in the air. Supporting his weight on his cane, the staff was poking small holes into the soil right next to his footsteps. But the night itself seemed oddly dark, the crescent moon perpetually covered in clouds. Past the border of his lamp’s light, there lay thick darkness, unpenetrable to gaze. Now more alert to sight and sound, he kept walking, but warily. It seemed as though the night had closed in on him; oppressing the sphere of light, which accompanied him. He must have been in the northeast of the lands because the air was chillier than the night before and calm streams and sometimes torrential rivers pierced the fertile land.
Civilization must not be far, he thought.
He need not worry though, his gift was one of eternal solitude.
Or at least he thought.
From the veil of darkness then, there came a rustling. Cracking branches. Footsteps. Hooves or feet he could not tell, since the larger signs of life had grown unknown to him. He pulled his cowl from his crown, veered his eyes behind him, from where the sound had come, and spoke for the first time in a long time:
“Is there anybody there?”
The light of his lamp flickered, as he waited for the unlikely answer. But indeed, no one answered and the steps receded in the distance. The hermit recalled his vow from the order from whence he had come, murmuring it beneath his breath and he shuddered. The cold air froze him to the bone and his whole body was aching at this point. It was undeniable: something changed – for the worse.
Then, single drops announced what turned into a slow applause of rain. He covered his head with his cowl and resumed his directionless journey, though his mind was restless now.