Account of Four Cobblestones

In a secluded valley, a boy descended from a ridge at dusk, his steps leading him towards an ancient barrow, said to contain the remains of a prior civilization. The boy, who was yet to earn his name, carried four black stones in his pocket, each one bearing the sigil of Tyr.

As he approached the barrow, he passed a solitary menhir with a scorch mark resembling the sigil of Wayland. The boy felt the stones in his pocket heavy and cold as bullets, a sense of foreboding settling upon him.

In the clearing before the barrow, an old woman was feeding a bonfire. She hailed from Leipzig, a city where the streets were the site of a noisy protest. The old woman spoke, her voice carrying the weight of ancient tales, "The wars are never over, but Gaea herself has spoken."

She proceeded to tell a tale of lovers separated by fate in the Najd desert, another of Koschei the Deathless and his hidden soul. The boy listened intently, his heart pounding in his chest. The old woman then placed three of the boy's Tyr stones in an irregular triangle upon the barrow, representing Gaza, Kyiv, and London.

The wind rose, the stars came out, and the remaining stone in his pocket grew warm. The boy returned to the solitary menhir and placed the remaining Tyr stone at its base, completing the circle.

The old woman's voice echoed from the deep fissure, older than all human languages, "The earth cracks as in ages past." The boy woke up the next morning with his name in his mouth, a name he had never known before.

The boy's dream was vivid and strange, filled with bodies of fire and water, estranged families, men in suits, children with no mouths, contracts written on human skin, Baba Yaga's hut, djinn dancing through burning oil fields, and Herne the Hunter riding towards London. The events of that night remained a mystery, but the boy knew that his life had changed forever.