Nothing can bolster the spirit more than a good story, and the river town of Svyarod was full of them. Maybe that was why Adalai grew to be so stubborn and bullheaded. Raised on legends and myths brought down the river by foreign merchants on trading barges, to the boy the world was a place of cunning villains and the heroes who overcame them, and he wanted nothing more to be the hero of his own legend. There was, however, one topic that those storytellers never touched, for fear of invoking it's subject, and that was the Elves of Celador, the ruthless protectors of the forest. It was these stories that Adalai longed to hear. After all, his father and half-sister were both elves, though his mother was a Tiefling, why wouldn't they want to share legends about their people? Perhaps this desperation to connect is what drove the siblings to seek out the whispered tales of Elven ruins beneath the roiling waves of the river the town settled. To the pair, the near drowning and months of chores and scolding were well worth their treasures, a broken blade and a ruddy circlet.

It was not long after he and his sister split the haul evenly, to Adalai the weapon, to his sister Vesra, the crown, that the voices appeared. Whispers in the dark, unintelligible, but concerned, perhaps frantic. It was too late that Adalai realized they were a warning. His mother had left with a small caravan up river to clear up a trading dispute, leaving Adalai in his sister's care while their father worked. The Elves came in the night. Adalai remembered being rushed from his bed by his father to a small closet and told to stay quiet. He heard unfamiliar voices arguing with his father, talks of "corrupted bloodlines", "allying with the invaders", and finally "desecrated relics." He heard his father utter a pleading name, "Nindrel" then the horrible squelch of a blade running through flesh. He heard them rummaging through the house, and his blood ran cold when he saw the knob on the closet door begin to turn. That's when his sister cried out, desperately gaining the attention of the elves. Adalai wanted to scream, but no sound left his throat until long after the intruders had left with his sister. When he finally gathered the courage to leave his hiding space, the sun was already beginning to rise. The town had been emptied of all life, left to be reclaimed by the forest. Adalai wanted nothing more to succumb to the horror and despair, but a familiar voice in the dark whispered into his ear. "This is just like the stories you love, isn't it? A villain has made their play, and a hero must rise to meet it. Why shouldn't it be you?" So, desperate to be the hero like in his beloved stories and unable to face his mother after everything, Adalai forcing confidence into himself. After all, the hero always wins, don't they?