The great Boris Dyatlov (you might have heard of him) was born in Ameresh, on 16945, to Sergei and Misha Dyatlov, two honest cobblers who had never traveled farther than their work and their means allowed. If you haven't surmised yet, they were very poor.
Their shop was small, tucked between a baker and a carpenter's workshop on a street that was always busy with the footsteps of others. From dawn until dusk, people passed their door: merchants, laborers, guards, farmers, travelers, and the occasional adventurer whose boots seemed to Boris to have walked through half the world before arriving at his father's bench.
To Sergei, every pair of shoes told a story.
He could tell by the wear on a sole whether a man walked heavily or lightly, whether he favored one foot, whether he spent his days on stone roads or muddy fields. He could look at a worn heel and know whether its owner worked at a forge, hauled carts, rode horses, or simply spent too much time wandering taverns.
But more than anything, Sergei respected shoes for what they did.
"They carry us," he would say.
Boris had heard those words a thousand times.
"A man can have strong legs, Boris. He can have a strong back, strong arms, a strong heart. None of it matters much if his feet cannot carry him."
Sergei would turn a boot over in his hands, inspecting the stitching with the seriousness of a priest examining a sacred text or a goblet of wine.
"Remember this: your feet support you your whole life. And what supports your feet supports you. A good pair of shoes can carry a man farther than he ever thought he could go."
It was one of the few things Sergei spoke about with genuine passion.
To Misha, shoes were simply the family trade. To Sergei, they were something more.
He believed that a man's shoes could determine how far he could go. Boris never forgot that.
His childhood was otherwise simple. He swept the shop, fetched leather, carried tools, and learned the names of every awl, hammer, needle, and piece of thread before he was old enough to properly use them. His mother taught him to keep the books and count the coins. His father taught him to cut leather without wasting a scrap.
There was enough food on the table. There was a warm bed at night. There was always work to be done.
It was a good life.
But Boris had never been very good at being satisfied with a good life. How could he settle for "good" when he knew "excellent" waited somewhere out there?
He would sometimes sit outside the shop after closing, watching the road. Travelers fascinated him.
He wondered where they had come from. He wondered where they were going. He imagined the roads beyond Ameresh stretching farther than the eye could see, leading to strange towns, distant kingdoms, forgotten ruins, dark forests and mountains whose peaks disappeared into the clouds.
Sometimes he imagined himself returning home years later, wearing a battered cloak and a pair of boots covered in dust from roads no one in Ameresh had ever walked. He imagined having stories to tell. Real stories. Not stories about the price of leather or a customer who had torn his sole. Stories about places he had never seen and people he had never met.
His father noticed his wandering eyes.
"Thinking about the road again?"
Boris would smile.
"Maybe!"
Sergei would shake his head, though there was often a smile hiding beneath his beard.
"Then make sure you have good shoes when you finally walk it."
Boris promised that he would.
As the years passed, the desire only grew. At fourteen, he began lingering longer whenever travelers entered the shop. At fifteen, he began asking them questions. Where had they been? How far had they traveled? What was beyond the next town? Had they seen the sea? Had they fought monsters? Had they ever been afraid?
Some laughed at him. Others indulged him. A few simply told him that the world was not as exciting as a boy imagined. Boris never believed them. Perhaps they had simply forgotten what it was like to dream. And so, while his father spent his days repairing the shoes that carried other men along their journeys, Boris dreamed of beginning his own.
He thought often about Sergei's words: a man's shoes can determine how far he can go. Boris wondered if the same might be true of a man's life. Perhaps the difference between a man who stayed in one place and a man who crossed the world was nothing more than the courage to take the first step.
On the morning of his sixteenth birthday, Boris woke before sunrise. He lay in bed for a long while, staring at the ceiling. Then he rose and dressed quietly. He took a little food, a small amount of money he had managed to save, and the best pair of boots his father had ever made for him.
Before leaving, he stood in the doorway of the little shop. His father was asleep. His mother was asleep. Boris looked at them for a long time. He loved them, that's what made leaving so difficult. But outside, beyond the quiet streets of Ameresh, the road was waiting.
Boris tightened the laces of his boots, then he stepped onto the road. And he kept walking.
And walking...
And walking...
He did not know where he was going - how far his feet would take him.
The Cobbler's Son
Re: The Cobbler's Son
For two years, the great Boris Dyatlov (you might have heard of him) walked.
He walked farther than he had ever imagined he could, following roads that twisted through foreign lands and paths that led to places no map in Ameresh had ever shown him. He slept beneath unfamiliar stars, ate food whose names he could barely pronounce, and listened to travelers tell stories that made his childhood dreams seem small.
Then, somewhere among the southern isles, he met Beatrice Cindertide.
She was an elf. To Boris, she seemed scarcely older than himself. Her face was youthful, her eyes bright, and her beauty seemed almost untouched by the years. He would only later learn that she had lived for centuries. She was the captain of the Cindertide crew, a band of pirates whose name was whispered with fear throughout the southern seas. They raided merchant vessels, plundered coastal settlements, and were particularly notorious around Ka'mella.
Boris should have been afraid of her. Instead, he fell in love. It happened quickly, as such things sometimes do when youth mistakes fascination for destiny. Beatrice saw something in him, too. Not love, but potential. She saw a boy who was strong, eager, inexperienced, and desperately hungry for the world. She saw how readily his eyes followed her whenever she spoke, how quickly he obeyed when she gave him an order, and how badly he wanted to prove himself.
So she offered him what he had always wanted: adventure. She offered him the sea and a place among those who lived beyond the reach of ordinary men.
Boris joined the Cindertide. At first, he was little more than another pair of hands. He carried crates. He scrubbed decks. He hauled ropes and loaded weapons. He learned to climb rigging, to read the weather, and to recognize the silhouettes of ships on the horizon.
And he learned to fight. Beatrice taught him herself. She placed a falchion in his hands and showed him how to move.
"Again."
He attacked. She disarmed him.
"Again."
He attacked. She knocked the blade from his hand.
"Again."
And again he rose. And again he tried. Relentlessly. Until she could not longer trick his weapon off his hand.
Boris learned quickly. What began as clumsy swings soon became precise cuts. His movements grew faster, lighter, more confident. He learned when to strike and when to wait. He learned how to read an opponent's shoulders, their feet, the slightest movement of their eyes. The falchion seemed to belong in his hand.
Beatrice recognized his talent. She praised him rarely, but whenever she did, Boris treasured her words for weeks. His infatuation only deepened. He flirted with her - of course he did. He brought her gifts. He volunteered for the most dangerous tasks. He tried to impress her with every victory.
She never returned his affection. Not once. But she never truly pushed him away, either. A smile here. A touch on the arm there. A whispered compliment when she wanted something done. Beatrice understood precisely how much power she held over him. And Boris, blinded by his feelings, mistook that power for affection.
Five years passed. The Cindertide raided ships. Then villages. Then towns. At first, Boris felt sick after every raid. He remembered the faces. The frightened merchants. The crying children. The men begging for their lives.
He remembered his mother's hands, always busy in the little shop in Ameresh. He remembered his father's voice.
"Your shoes carry you through life, Boris."
He would sit alone afterward, cleaning blood from his falchion, wondering what his parents would think if they could see him. The guilt was terrible. But guilt, like pain, can become familiar. And familiar things eventually become easier to endure. The first time Boris took a man's purse, his hands trembled. The tenth time, they did not. The first time he killed someone, he vomited afterward. Eventually, he stopped remembering the faces of the men he killed.
Actually, he began to enjoy the fights. There was something intoxicating about standing in front of another man and knowing that he was faster, stronger, smarter - better. The fear in an opponent's eyes became something Boris looked forward to. He began to smile when he drew his sword. He began to laugh when blood splashed across his boots. The boy who had once dreamed of adventure had become something else. Something harder. Something crueler. Something that no longer asked whether an action was right, only whether he could get away with it.
And he was very good at it.
In those five years, Boris became one of the Cindertide's most feared fighters. His victories became stories among the crew. His skill with the falchion became legendary. And eventually, he earned the mark reserved for the strongest among them. A tattoo was placed upon his shoulder: a wave with three dots above it. The Tide Mark. It meant that Boris was no longer merely a member of the crew - he was one of them. He was Tide Marked. One of the men the Cindertide trusted when violence was inevitable.
Boris was proud, but there was one thing he rarely noticed anymore: his boots were falling apart. They had once been the finest pair his father had ever made for him. Now the leather was cracked and stained. The soles had been repaired so many times that Boris had stopped counting. Salt had hardened the seams. The heels were uneven. One of the laces had been replaced with a strip of rope. They had carried him across roads, beaches, ships, battlefields, villages and ruins. They had carried him toward the life he had dreamed of. And they had carried him farther and farther away from the man his parents had raised. He could not remember the last time he had thought of that.
Then, in 16968, news reached the Cindertide: Ameresh had fallen. The Shadowclan orcs had invaded the city under the command of Firelord Igneos. The whole city was destroyed, consumed by flame and terror. Boris did not believe it at first. Then he remembered the shop. His father's bench. His mother's books. The little room where he had slept. The street outside. The road.
He remembered his parents.
He found Beatrice immediately.
"I have to go", he said.
She barely looked up.
"We have a job, you know", she replied.
"My home was attacked."
"Your home is here now, Boris. And we have a heist coming. We sail tomorrow."
"Beatrice."
She finally looked at him. There was no sympathy in her eyes. Only calculation.
"We have planned this for weeks", she continued.
"I don't care."
"You will."
"I need to know if they're alive", he begged. "Please!"
She turned away.
"We are not changing course."
Boris stared at her. For five years, he had followed her. Five long years. He had fought for her. Killed for her. Risked his life for her. He had become the man she wanted him to become. And now he asked for one thing. His home. His family.
And she refused.
For the first time in five years, Boris understood something with perfect clarity: she had never loved him. Perhaps she had never even cared about him. She had simply known how to use him. And yet, even then, some part of him wanted to stay.
He stood at the rail that night, staring into the black water. Behind him was Beatrice. Behind her was the life he had built. Ahead was Ameresh. Somewhere beyond the horizon were his parents. If they still lived.
Boris thought of the boy he had been. The boy who had run away because he wanted to see how far his feet could carry him. He thought of Sergei.
"Good shoes can carry a man farther than he ever thought he could go, son."
Boris looked down. His boots were nearly ruined. He had finally learned how far they could carry him. Far enough to lose everything.
He made his choice. Before dawn, Boris stole a rowboat. He cut the rope. The ship disappeared behind him as he rowed toward the mainland. He did not look back. Not even once...
From sea to port, from port to land, from land to mountain, from mountain to home... Ameresh was burning when he arrived. He stood there, on the peaks, staring. For a moment, he could not understand what he was seeing. The streets he remembered were gone. The buildings were blackened skeletons. Smoke hung over the city like a shroud. Flames still consumed what remained.
Boris ran. He ran through the ruined streets, calling for his parents.
"Father! Mother!"
No one answered.
He reached the shop. Or what remained of it. The roof had collapsed. The walls were broken. The tools that had once belonged to his father lay scattered among the ashes. The bench where Sergei had made hundreds of shoes was nothing but charred wood.
Boris stumbled forward. There was no sign of them. No bodies. No voices. Nothing.
He fell to his knees. For a long time, he simply stared at the ruins. Then the wind changed. And Boris smelled it: burnt leather. The smell of shoes. Thousands of them. Shoes that had once belonged to farmers, merchants, soldiers, children and travelers. Shoes that had carried people through their lives. Shoes his father had spent his life making.
All of them burned.
Boris closed his eyes. And for the first time in years, he remembered exactly what his father had told him.
"A man's shoes can determine how far he can go."
Boris had gone farther than Sergei and Misha could ever have imagined. He had crossed seas. Fought men. Taken lives. Become a pirate. Become a Tide Marked. And now he stood in the ruins of his childhood, with blood on his hands and ashes in his lungs.
He had wanted to know how far he could go. Now he finally knew. And there was nothing waiting for him at the end of the road.
Only death.
And fire.
He walked farther than he had ever imagined he could, following roads that twisted through foreign lands and paths that led to places no map in Ameresh had ever shown him. He slept beneath unfamiliar stars, ate food whose names he could barely pronounce, and listened to travelers tell stories that made his childhood dreams seem small.
Then, somewhere among the southern isles, he met Beatrice Cindertide.
She was an elf. To Boris, she seemed scarcely older than himself. Her face was youthful, her eyes bright, and her beauty seemed almost untouched by the years. He would only later learn that she had lived for centuries. She was the captain of the Cindertide crew, a band of pirates whose name was whispered with fear throughout the southern seas. They raided merchant vessels, plundered coastal settlements, and were particularly notorious around Ka'mella.
Boris should have been afraid of her. Instead, he fell in love. It happened quickly, as such things sometimes do when youth mistakes fascination for destiny. Beatrice saw something in him, too. Not love, but potential. She saw a boy who was strong, eager, inexperienced, and desperately hungry for the world. She saw how readily his eyes followed her whenever she spoke, how quickly he obeyed when she gave him an order, and how badly he wanted to prove himself.
So she offered him what he had always wanted: adventure. She offered him the sea and a place among those who lived beyond the reach of ordinary men.
Boris joined the Cindertide. At first, he was little more than another pair of hands. He carried crates. He scrubbed decks. He hauled ropes and loaded weapons. He learned to climb rigging, to read the weather, and to recognize the silhouettes of ships on the horizon.
And he learned to fight. Beatrice taught him herself. She placed a falchion in his hands and showed him how to move.
"Again."
He attacked. She disarmed him.
"Again."
He attacked. She knocked the blade from his hand.
"Again."
And again he rose. And again he tried. Relentlessly. Until she could not longer trick his weapon off his hand.
Boris learned quickly. What began as clumsy swings soon became precise cuts. His movements grew faster, lighter, more confident. He learned when to strike and when to wait. He learned how to read an opponent's shoulders, their feet, the slightest movement of their eyes. The falchion seemed to belong in his hand.
Beatrice recognized his talent. She praised him rarely, but whenever she did, Boris treasured her words for weeks. His infatuation only deepened. He flirted with her - of course he did. He brought her gifts. He volunteered for the most dangerous tasks. He tried to impress her with every victory.
She never returned his affection. Not once. But she never truly pushed him away, either. A smile here. A touch on the arm there. A whispered compliment when she wanted something done. Beatrice understood precisely how much power she held over him. And Boris, blinded by his feelings, mistook that power for affection.
Five years passed. The Cindertide raided ships. Then villages. Then towns. At first, Boris felt sick after every raid. He remembered the faces. The frightened merchants. The crying children. The men begging for their lives.
He remembered his mother's hands, always busy in the little shop in Ameresh. He remembered his father's voice.
"Your shoes carry you through life, Boris."
He would sit alone afterward, cleaning blood from his falchion, wondering what his parents would think if they could see him. The guilt was terrible. But guilt, like pain, can become familiar. And familiar things eventually become easier to endure. The first time Boris took a man's purse, his hands trembled. The tenth time, they did not. The first time he killed someone, he vomited afterward. Eventually, he stopped remembering the faces of the men he killed.
Actually, he began to enjoy the fights. There was something intoxicating about standing in front of another man and knowing that he was faster, stronger, smarter - better. The fear in an opponent's eyes became something Boris looked forward to. He began to smile when he drew his sword. He began to laugh when blood splashed across his boots. The boy who had once dreamed of adventure had become something else. Something harder. Something crueler. Something that no longer asked whether an action was right, only whether he could get away with it.
And he was very good at it.
In those five years, Boris became one of the Cindertide's most feared fighters. His victories became stories among the crew. His skill with the falchion became legendary. And eventually, he earned the mark reserved for the strongest among them. A tattoo was placed upon his shoulder: a wave with three dots above it. The Tide Mark. It meant that Boris was no longer merely a member of the crew - he was one of them. He was Tide Marked. One of the men the Cindertide trusted when violence was inevitable.
Boris was proud, but there was one thing he rarely noticed anymore: his boots were falling apart. They had once been the finest pair his father had ever made for him. Now the leather was cracked and stained. The soles had been repaired so many times that Boris had stopped counting. Salt had hardened the seams. The heels were uneven. One of the laces had been replaced with a strip of rope. They had carried him across roads, beaches, ships, battlefields, villages and ruins. They had carried him toward the life he had dreamed of. And they had carried him farther and farther away from the man his parents had raised. He could not remember the last time he had thought of that.
Then, in 16968, news reached the Cindertide: Ameresh had fallen. The Shadowclan orcs had invaded the city under the command of Firelord Igneos. The whole city was destroyed, consumed by flame and terror. Boris did not believe it at first. Then he remembered the shop. His father's bench. His mother's books. The little room where he had slept. The street outside. The road.
He remembered his parents.
He found Beatrice immediately.
"I have to go", he said.
She barely looked up.
"We have a job, you know", she replied.
"My home was attacked."
"Your home is here now, Boris. And we have a heist coming. We sail tomorrow."
"Beatrice."
She finally looked at him. There was no sympathy in her eyes. Only calculation.
"We have planned this for weeks", she continued.
"I don't care."
"You will."
"I need to know if they're alive", he begged. "Please!"
She turned away.
"We are not changing course."
Boris stared at her. For five years, he had followed her. Five long years. He had fought for her. Killed for her. Risked his life for her. He had become the man she wanted him to become. And now he asked for one thing. His home. His family.
And she refused.
For the first time in five years, Boris understood something with perfect clarity: she had never loved him. Perhaps she had never even cared about him. She had simply known how to use him. And yet, even then, some part of him wanted to stay.
He stood at the rail that night, staring into the black water. Behind him was Beatrice. Behind her was the life he had built. Ahead was Ameresh. Somewhere beyond the horizon were his parents. If they still lived.
Boris thought of the boy he had been. The boy who had run away because he wanted to see how far his feet could carry him. He thought of Sergei.
"Good shoes can carry a man farther than he ever thought he could go, son."
Boris looked down. His boots were nearly ruined. He had finally learned how far they could carry him. Far enough to lose everything.
He made his choice. Before dawn, Boris stole a rowboat. He cut the rope. The ship disappeared behind him as he rowed toward the mainland. He did not look back. Not even once...
From sea to port, from port to land, from land to mountain, from mountain to home... Ameresh was burning when he arrived. He stood there, on the peaks, staring. For a moment, he could not understand what he was seeing. The streets he remembered were gone. The buildings were blackened skeletons. Smoke hung over the city like a shroud. Flames still consumed what remained.
Boris ran. He ran through the ruined streets, calling for his parents.
"Father! Mother!"
No one answered.
He reached the shop. Or what remained of it. The roof had collapsed. The walls were broken. The tools that had once belonged to his father lay scattered among the ashes. The bench where Sergei had made hundreds of shoes was nothing but charred wood.
Boris stumbled forward. There was no sign of them. No bodies. No voices. Nothing.
He fell to his knees. For a long time, he simply stared at the ruins. Then the wind changed. And Boris smelled it: burnt leather. The smell of shoes. Thousands of them. Shoes that had once belonged to farmers, merchants, soldiers, children and travelers. Shoes that had carried people through their lives. Shoes his father had spent his life making.
All of them burned.
Boris closed his eyes. And for the first time in years, he remembered exactly what his father had told him.
"A man's shoes can determine how far he can go."
Boris had gone farther than Sergei and Misha could ever have imagined. He had crossed seas. Fought men. Taken lives. Become a pirate. Become a Tide Marked. And now he stood in the ruins of his childhood, with blood on his hands and ashes in his lungs.
He had wanted to know how far he could go. Now he finally knew. And there was nothing waiting for him at the end of the road.
Only death.
And fire.