Korax Blackwings

"When a child is born with feathers black as a moonless night, the sky will give him wings. But the shadows will claim his heart."

So says the prophecy of the Nest of the Cleft Mountains. Nobody recites it out loud. Everybody knows it.

In the Nest, everything belongs to everyone. The eggs too. They are cared for together in the Hatchery, at the top of the cliff, and nobody knows whose each one is.

Eeka knew. She had laid it while sick, late and in secret. An egg darker than the rest. Something told her it was special.

One stormy, moonless night, every egg hatched. All but one.

When it finally cracked, a black beak came out. Then black feathers. And orange eyes that watched without making a sound.

It was not a hawk. Nor an eagle. It was a raven.

The Hatchery went silent. It even seemed to grow colder.

They called the Cloudspeaker, the old owl-faced shaman. He took the chick in his arms, and the little one only had eyes for a stone hanging from his staff: a black obsidian that shone in the firelight.

The shaman laughed and gave it to him. "Korax Blackwings," he said. "You will leave your mark on the world. Good or bad, we shall see."

Eeka would not let him go. And the Nest, grudgingly, let him stay.

The adults were polite to him. To his face. Behind his back, there were always whispers. Conversations stopped when he arrived.

The children did not pretend. They threw things at him. They called him Shadow. He almost always ate alone.

He had only three things. His mother. The Cloudspeaker. And Saeryn.

Saeryn was a white and golden eagle, with the kindest blue eyes in the Nest. The chief's daughter. The only one who sat with him. "Leave him alone, he has done nothing."

Korax loved everything that shone. At home he kept a stash of stones and trinkets worthless to anyone else. But nothing shone like her.

One day they gave him a wooden carving. A raven and an eagle embracing. And his mother hung the shaman's obsidian around his neck. "So you never forget who you are." "And that you are not alone."

Years later, an adventurer spent the night in the Nest. On his back he carried the strangest sword Korax had ever seen: two blades, one on each side of the hilt, covered in green runes. And a huge black gem at its center.

Korax only wanted to see it up close. Saeryn begged him not to. He did not listen.

The owner came back drunk and found them in his room. He shouted thieves. He grabbed Saeryn. He drew a dagger.

Eeka stepped between them to protect them. It was the last thing she did.

Then it was Saeryn's turn.

The runes of the sword began to glow in Korax's hands. And something, inside the sword, spoke to him.

"Use my power."

A black and green blast burst from his hand and stopped the killer dead. Then, two blades on the diagonal and a spin. The man fell, cut in two.

Saeryn was still breathing. She stroked his face. "Do not close yourself off. Find friends. Even if it is in the shadows."

When the adults came up, they found a raven wrapped in black smoke, holding a sword that burned green.

The chief looked at him and said what the Nest had been thinking for years: "At last you have shown what you are." And he banished him forever.

Korax left that same night. Without looking back. With the wooden carving, the obsidian and the sword that would no longer stay quiet.

The shadows claimed his heart, as the prophecy said.

What the prophecy did not say is whom he would choose. Today he fights with the Black Fang, on the side of the Light.

He is still looking for friends. Even if it is in the shadows.

And he still cannot resist anything that shines.