Calen was sitting on his bed with a copy of ’A brief history of the Flamebearers’ in his hand, waiting to be read.
The book was significantly shorter than one would expect from a tome describing multiple world-saving heroes, but apparently there was a reason for it.
"Every single mark bearer disappeared soon after finishing their job, so we only have fragmented second hand accounts." That was what Elira told him.
He wasn’t particularly thrilled to learn that all of his predecessors fell off the face of the earth, but he figured that maybe reading this book would give him some sort of a clue on how to avoid a similar fate.
The thin tome looked... unique, to say the least.
The cover wasn’t made of wood, leather or paper like in most cases - instead the old pages were cased in a heavy metal binder, covered in elaborate illustrations depicting various foes defeated by the past Flamebearers.
It was dark gray in color, except in one place - the center was occupied by a golden circle with a black sun engraved on it, the same one that was present on Calen’s wrist.
The beginning of the book was an introduction to the concept of Flamebearers: who they were, what they did, how they came to be, and so on.
He scanned the opening to see if there was something he didn’t know, but it contained only the most basic information.
The first entry was by far the largest one, and concerned the original Flamebearer - The Sun King Anatos.
It was almost pointless to read that part, every person in the Sun Kingdom knew his story, but he started reading nonetheless.
Anatos was not born with that name, in fact he was born without one. It was during a time were the lands were split between countless warlords, each of them too busy with conquest to consider their subjects.
The future king came to this world as a member of a small tribe situated high in the mountains - a position that let them avoid majority of the conflict. As he grew up and understood the state of the world, he came to resent it.
His tribe preached that every life was sacred, and he happened to strongly agree with that stance - in fact during his coming of age ceremony he made a vow to stop the bloodshed that was happening all around the world.
According to the story, that action has caught the attention of the Sun God, who came down to offer him a blessing:
"Greetings, oh merciful one. I admire your conviction, and would like to give you means of fulfilling your mission. Will you accept my gift?"
Even though worship of gods wasn’t as common in the times of the old pantheon, he knew better than to reject a divine blessing.
He kneeled before the radiant figure and sworn his fealty to the god, in exchange for power.
The sun god extended their index finger, and lightly tapped his forehead - the gesture caused a radiant symbol to appear there, marking the future king as the chosen.
"Along with this power, I bestow a name upon you - from now on you shall be known as Anatos. Go forth, and fulfill your purpose."
He did exactly that, using the power given to him he quickly subjugated many of the warlords - those who surrendered were spared, while those who resisted were exterminated.
It took Anatos only five years to unite the entire land under one banner, and proclaim himself the new sovereign - The Sun King. It meant that the ruling dynasty of the Sun Kingdom started with him - or so the story says.
Whether the legend was true or not, Calen did not know.
He knew that the ruling monarch wore a golden mask with a sun symbol on the forehead, but it could easily be disregarded as the royal family playing up its mystical origins.
When he finished the story, he realised that he already read over half of the book - it didn’t bode well for the rest of the entries in the book, nevertheless hel flipped the page and started reading.
Calen sighed and closed the tome with a silent ’clank’.
The rest of the stories in the book ranged from ’lacking in detail’ to ’completely disjointed and incomprehensible’.
Even so, he did manage to learn a few new facts about the past Flamebearers.
For one, each of them has the mark in a different place on their body - although that was more of a fun fact than useful information.
He also noticed that all of them had exactly two things in common.
The first one was that their weapon of choice was always a longsword, either by a coincidence or it was something the Sun God paid attention to for some reason.
Calen shared that quality, so he didn’t really question this part - it was the second commonality that made him pause.
From what he understood, each of his predecessors were chosen because they represented a specific virtue at the moment if their marking - mercy, honor, loyalty, purity, or any of the others.
While Calen didn’t consider himself a bad person, he definitely wasn’t holy, nor did he embody any specific good quality.
What’s more, unlike the previous Flamebearers who were marked as adults, he was chosen at the age of seven - far to young to really represent any virtues.
’Is that why both the Guardians and that other guy called me strange?’ He wondered.
For some reason he felt like he wouldn’t get an answer even if he was to ask them directly.
Outside of the common parts, he also noticed a few outliers - those who started off as virtuous, but ended up as cruel monsters.
There were exactly two cases of Flamebearers going psycho, but their stories were so similar in their message that it would be pointless to describe both.
Morg the Scorched was the Flamebearer around three centuries ago - back when the Sun Kingdom was at war with a tribal alliance in the north.
Morg was tasked with resolving the conflict, as he was deemed a paragon of justice - unfortunately for everyone involved it turned out his definition of the word was a bit different from everyone else’s.
When he arrived at the front lines under the cover of night, he slaughtered the commanding officers of both armies, and put their charred bodies on pikes for everyone to see.
Predictably, the cruel display didn’t stop the fighting, but instead intensified it.
The next night Morg did the same to the people who were next in the chain of command.
Every time the armies grew smaller, and the Flamebearer more powerful.
On the tenth day only foot soldiers remained, leaving both armies in the state of disarray. That was when Morg finally entered the battlefield.
He talked of justice, and how it was only fair that they all died as the propagators of violence.
Since the soldiers never saw him before, they mocked and ridiculed him, completely unaware of the danger they were in.
Instead of responding to their taunts, Morg simply released a fan of golden flame, incinerating most of the armies in a single attack.
Before anyone has chance to react, the Flamebearer obliterated everyone present, leaving nothing but ash in his wake.
When he returned to the capital, Morg expected to be treated like a hero - instead he was arrested and put on trial. What’s most interesting about that part was that he seemingly lost his power, and was unable to break free from even regular iron chains.
Morg was promptly tried, declared an enemy of the kingdom, and executed.
There was s very important lesson in that one - if the Sun God deems you unworthy of his gifts he can take them away... at least in some cases.
The book contained one story that was contradictory to this one in terms of message.
It was by far the most fragmented tale, and one could tell it was heavily redacted. The story was about one of the early Flamebearers who has seemingly rebelled against the Sun God. It wasn’t clear what was the reason, or even what form this disobedience took.
What stuck out to Calen was the fact that despite the defiance of the marked one, the Sun God was apparently unable to take away their powers.
The end of the conflict wasn’t described, but considering the Sun God was still here, and the Flamebearer wasn’t, one could easily guess what happened.
Calen felt that this particular story would be very important in the future, so he tried to learn about it as much as possible. He wasn’t planning on going against his only chance of survival in this desolate hellscape of course, but it was better to have options.
Despite the fragmented and redacted nature of the tale, he managed to find exactly one instance of the Flamebearer’s name in the entire story. Someone has attempted to scratch out the words, but he could still make out enough letters to read:
’Cykarr the Truthseeker’