House of Chains/Prologue

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Verge of the Nascent, the 943rd Day of the Search
1159 Burn's Sleep
==The Nascent==
Countless putrefying, grey, bloated bodies line the shoreline of the Nascent in the warren of Shadow. They are the former inhabitants of the drowned city lying offshore, flooded by a great river that had temporarily crossed a rent between worlds. Now only a huge wall thirty paces across and stretching into the distance barely holds back the water and its lifeless flotsam from the rest of Shadow.
The Tiste Edur, Trull Sengar, is dragged along the top of the wall by his brothers and his bruised and battered body is chained by his wrists and ankles to a set of iron rings on the wall. Then his mouth is muzzled and the Shorning begins. A symbol is carved into his forehead and then rubbed in ash. His long single braid is hacked off and an unguent is smeared into his scalp to kill his remaining hair. He is an outcast. To his family and his people he has never existed. For a crime he has not committed.
Afterwards, his brothers stand over him. One brother speaks. They agree that Trull has betrayed him. That he claimed this brother betrayed his own people and served a hidden master. Does he not understand that their enemies have fallen before them, this brother asks. Does he not understand the sacrifices that have been made? Worse, did he not call their enemies the Pure Kin and forbid their deaths? Trull has betrayed them all. Thus, Trull is no more.
The brothers leave and Trull is alone with the lapping water and the feeding crabs. He thinks that soon the water will rise over the wall and he will drown. But so will his brothers and his people, in a sense. Like the rent driven water, they have shattered Nature's balance. And Nature does not abide an imbalance.
de:Der Krieg der Schwestern/Prolog
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