The Count of the Mesahearts tells the rise of Veydris Alarast, a pale and ill-omened child born to one of Mesaheart’s richest mining families, whose birth was marked by silence in the winds, cracks in the gold veins, and the death of beasts in the stables. Though his mother loved him fiercely, the people whispered that he was cursed, a mistake of the earth-god Kinara. As he grew, Veydris’s hunger for knowledge set him apart, he learned herbs, metals, and hidden workings of fire and stone, healing wounds and crafting tools far beyond his years. Yet his gifts only deepened fear: priests condemned him as touched by darkness, and at last the crowd demanded his death. Bound to a pyre before his own house, he burned, but his ashes stirred with strange life, and in secret he rose again, changed, more shadow than flesh. From that moment Veydris became both outcast and wanderer, seeking truth in forbidden sciences, binding himself to strange forces, and gathering followers who saw in him not a curse but a savior. As Mesaheart plunged into famine, rebellion, and priestly cruelty, Veydris returned not as heir but as conqueror, leading miners, exiles, and the forgotten to overthrow the old order. In blood and fire he carved his dominion, not merely over the mesas but over life and death itself, until the people who once spat his name came to kneel and call him Count of the Mesahearts, a title both feared and worshiped, marking the birth of the man who would one day become the great antagonist of the Veyran Saga.