It was nearly midday when Aster heard the familiar sentry bell at the edge of his ancestral land. He took the beautiful valley air into his lungs, and smiled up at the familiar trees and rock outcroppings he used to climb as a child. The hills rolled away between the main road and the lake, and Aster could just spot a couple of houses around the edge of the water. The Sisters, the mountains between which his home rested, stretched their green peaks toward the sky.

As he and ...