Barth Gilfried emerges from the jungle's dappled shadow. A broad-shouldered man, he's garbed in foreign garments, woven from the vibrant flora that surrounds him. His fair nobleman's skin has been kissed tawny by Feasia's relentless sun, and his once refined features now bear the weathered signature of a rugged survivor.
Barth hails from a disoriented reality of opulence and intrigue, a noble existence he never desired nor learned to master. Descendant from the devious Gilfried family, their ancestral prowess lies not in war or trade, but in the dangerous game of palace politics. This cold familial temperament didn’t suit Barth, whose heart yearned for an authentic, straightforward life.
His previous life recedes like the tide as he recalls the girl he once knew—Zelda. Born of a lower station, she was beautiful, with her fiery temperament matching the copper strands that spilled over her shoulders. She was the wild fury before a storm, the tranquil moment just after. The stark opposite of Barth's icy family, Zelda was his sanctuary, his childhood friend, who ignited the spark of rebellion in him that eventually led to his detainment.
Living meagerly off the unforgiving Feasian land, Barth finds himself embroiled in the struggle against nature's harsh elements while warding off the suspicions of its purple-skinned natives, the Odda. He has traded politics for survival, his padded silken seat for a mat of woven jungle grass. His motive? Simple. It is the daunting hope of once again seeing the glimmers of a morning sun unhindered by the cold stone of prison walls, to breathe the fresh dawn air of freedom.
Though suffering from periodic bouts of palsy, the remnants of a cruel whip used by his captors, Barth endures. Tattered and torn, he carries the symbol of his old life, a silver locket containing Zelda's lock of copper hair, a reassuring weight against his bare chest.
In the cruel joke that was his existence, God had meddled once, casting him as an outcast amidst a hostile land for supposed crimes of mutiny. But Barth endures. Loneliness clings to him like a second skin. His only companion is the echo of his own voice, bouncing off quiet trees—his apparent penance for that youthful desire of authenticity.
Left to carve his destiny amidst Feasia's untamed wilderness, this prisoner of circumstance breaches the gap between nobility and outlaw, between civilization and wilderness. Barth Gilfried, the outcast, forges his path, buoyed by the longing for a home he left behind, driven by the unforgiving crucible that destiny has thrown him into. His tale transcends familial history; it is one of survival and adaptation, endurance and redemption, a chronicle born from the harsh touch of divine intervention, and testament to a man’s indomitable spirit.