"The fools", thought Kayne, stepping over another lifeless body. "Maybe if they hadn't been so busy telling their silly bedtime stories, they would've seen us coming, and I wouldn't be the last of the Time Walkers."

The other Time Walkers would tell their kids anything to keep them from growing too afraid. But in the end, it didn't matter. He killed them all, solidifying his position as the ruler of the world.

"That's the last of them, sire," said one of his generals. "Congratulations."

The mortals did not know what Time Walkers were. They did not know of the centuries that Kayne's people had lived through. They only knew that he was a skilled warrior, and that they would follow him into battle even if he asked them to lay siege to Heaven and Hell.

"Today," Kayne said to his men, "we have achieved victory! Today, there is nothing that will ever stand in our way again! Tonight, we feast in celebration of our victory!"

What they didn't know was that Kayne would be here long after all of them were dead and gone. He had risen to power quickly, challenging a mortal king for control of his kingdom. Of course it was never much of a challenge. Though Kayne looked to the mortals to be a young man, perhaps in his 20s, he was actually close to 300 years old.

The other Time Walkers, a peaceful race of immortals who had mastered the sword over thousands of years, were all that might have been able to stop him, which is why he had to hunt them all down in these early years of his rule. Men, women, and children, ambushed in their homes and killed in the night by his armies.

The Time Walkers had watched empires rise and fall, careful not to intervene in the affairs of mortals.

Kayne's childhood watched the birth of a fledgling young nation, the product of the usurping of a king. This young nation grew to engulf many of its neighboring countries. And yet the Time Walkers had the power to stop them at any time.

They should see us as gods, Kayne had thought. Around the time he turned 200, his views fractured him from the peaceful Time Walkers.

"If you won't live as gods," Kayne bellowed, "You can die as mortals!" Those were the last of Kayne's words to the Time Walkers.

Banned from the settlements of his people, he vowed to himself to keep his promise, and he set off toward the crown of the country aside which he had been raised.