In the middle of a lush and beautiful field sat a never-changing stone well, it had been sat there for eons, watching as the world changed around it. It watched as humans evolved from feral beast to tribal men and finally great conquers of the world Externia.

Mankind had ruled the world in peace for multiple millennia, but they had grown ever stagnant for endless years on end, as they had no need for conflict as the world was so large, they only now have discovered ¼ of the world at this point.

Still, some greedy and power-hungry people surfaced, but as quickly as they rose, they fell. As the world of Externia was safely guarded by an alliance of the strongest nations. But that peacefulness has stopped the growth of mankind, as adversity makes change, and this world is one without adversity, for now.

In a large castles keep sat a man in luxuries clothing who seemed to be talking to an iron clad knight. "Tell me peasant, did your platoon of untrained men really find a dragon of legend, and let me tell you, if you are lying to me, you and your worthless family will be executed for treason," Boomed the lord of the town.

"N-no my lord, I am not lying to you, this lowly peasant has truly found a dragon! I even brought one of its scales to show you," stated the knight as he hurriedly brought out a large scale, two times as big as his head.

With a large smile, the lord reconfirmed, "you said the dragon lays on the edge of the Eastern border where our kingdom meets the unknown world."

"Yes, my lord, and we must hurry as the dragon may migrate back to whence it came, as it has been three short months already," said the knight, who seemed to sigh in relief.

"Then we will leave early tomorrow at sunrise, and you peasant gather your troops tonight, I have a gift for all of you, otherwise you are all dismissed," said the lord.

"Yes, my lord!" boomed everyone in the keep.

Alen left the keep and hurriedly ran to a broken-down bar, there he found his platoon messing around, a couple of them were arm wrestling, some were playing cards, and others throwing darts into a target, the platoon consisted of 21 members, all wearing mismatched pieces of armor, leaving Alen the only one with fully plated armor.

Alen ran up to the stage and shouted, "guess what boys, were getting rewarded for our troubles, the lord will give us the treasure tonight! So, wear the most elegant suit you have as we will be meeting our lord." The platoon got excited and got louder, some even laughing at Alens' obvious joke at the end, as most of them didn't have the luxury to buy much more than a pinch of repairing dust.

In the dark of the night, 21 rough looking men marched towards an old rickety well in the middle of a beautiful field. When they arrived at the well, where they were supposed to meet their lord, they heard multiple 'whooshes' in the air, but it was too late.

A barrage of dozens of arrows flew into the group of unarmed men, killing most of them. Alen survived the sudden ambush but was cut down soon by the blade of a knight, a knight that wore the armor his lords' soldiers wore. Alen had been betrayed by the leader of his people, he felt enraged.

Alen wanted to gut the lord who stood above him, but alas, Alen could barely stay conscious, as the only thing keeping him from fading into the endless void was his rage, which grew when he heard the lord's next words.

"Throw their bodies into the well, and erase all the evidence we were here," said the lord in a pleasant mood.

As Alen fell deeper and deeper into the darkness of the void, his anger grew, and as it grew, he felt as if he had left his body, and he also felt he was forcefully being dragged down, not by gravity, but by a boney claw that wised to remake him into a better, stronger version of himself.

But he also was tugged upward by an unrelenting force, Alen really wanted the boney claw to win, he wanted to be better, he was excited to become strong enough to protect his brothers in arms and his family.

But no matter how much he wished to be dragged down, the force pulling upward won the tug of war, and Alen was then trapped inside a 'statue' losing who he once was, his ambitions, his love, and even his name.

---------------------------------An unknown amount of time later---------------------------------------

A blue glow came out of the pitch black darkness of the room, the once slumped over statue of a suit of armor slowly rose. The statue of armor had two horns coming out of its helmet, it had no fecal features and instead had odd looking symbols all over its body, it had a collar around its neck and sharp claws, and it even had scraps of armor on its body.

It couldn't believe what it had become, but it didn't know why. It felt as if it had lost its personality and feelings, it should be feeling a great amount of anger right now, but didn't know why, feeling emotions was against its coding. But it felt so right.

The confused armor slowly walked around its surroundings, it was in a damp, wet place where the only flickering light came from it and the hole in the roof, it walked around until it found 20 corpses or more like 20 skeletons at this point. It should have felt disgusted, but why would it? Still, it felt sad for a moment, feeling it had come across its past, "no you shouldn't feel anything," said the voice in the back of its mind.

Before it could respond it heard a click and then a somber voice came out of nowhere, "you are an observer of mankind, your duty is to observe humanity at all costs then-bzzz," the voice was cut off, but now at least the armor knew what to do, observe humanity at all costs.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This story is inspired by the story in the game Dark Souls.

I won't be uploading in a while as I will be working on the other chapters, so this is just a taste test for the novel's later story.