Prologue

For now, this is a short story prompt. In the future, however, I have hopes that I may develop this into an epic fantasy novel.

"There's something familiar in the way you compose yourself."
Strange lips stretched taught over teeth, ground together and barely concealing the rage gathering in the throat behind them.
"Familiarity is the condition in which you recognize something you once knew, however vague your memory is. You've never known me, peddler, I have many faces."
-
That which is alive hath known death, and that which is dead can never die, for in the Circle of the Spirit, life is naught and death is naught.