Roan

King Roan. A man who ascended to the throne relatively recently. But he ruled with justice and dignity. Since his father's reign, his servants and guards had remained unchanged, only occasionally, for special reasons. But the one who had remained unchanged throughout all this time was the royal family's personal servant. Roan had known him since childhood and, it seemed, hadn't even aged. The servant had been a trusted confidant of the royal family for as long as they had known him. He was respected and his status was sought after—of course, it depended on it, but that wasn't the point.

It was a sunny day, seemingly calm and quiet. Roan was in his office, dealing with village affairs. Having finished issuing instructions, he called for a servant. The man arrived quickly enough. After giving the written instructions, the servant left. And only out of the corner of his eye, quite by chance, did the king notice. The hammer held by the statue of the honored knight began to fall. Roan was about to help, when one glance from the servant caused the hammer to fall back into place as if it had never fallen. Roan turned pale; mages hadn't been seen for over a century... perhaps he imagined it.

A couple of days later, the King began to notice his servant frequently disappearing into the library. The man quietly entered the vast royal library, filled with history. Noticing the servant, he waited for him to leave. The servant returned one of the books to its place and left. He approached the place and picked up a book with a dark cover and silver engraving. He flipped through a couple of pages and stopped at one, seemingly frequently opened. The lines were incomprehensible, like an ordinary book, but after flipping through, he reached a certain chapter. "The essence that became human"—the words sounded strange, even impossible. The essence became human? But as he began to read, Roan slowly but surely realized that the essence had imprisoned its powers and true form in an amulet. One of the pages even had a drawing of this amulet, with a dark frame and a purple stone in the center, unnaturally dark. The same one the servant was wearing.