Anas?rimbor Kellhus.
Far to the north, in the very shadow of Golgotterath, a group of ascetics called the D?nyain had concealed themselves in Ishu?l, the secret redoubt of the K?niüric High Kings ere their destruction in the First Apocalypse. For two thousand years the D?nyain had pursued their sacred study, breeding for reflex and intellect, training in the ways of limb, thought, and face—all for the sake of reason, the Logos. They had dedicated their entire existence to mastering the irrationalities of history, custom, and passion—all those things that determine human thought. In this way, they believed, they would eventually grasp what they called the Absolute, and so become true self-moving souls.
But their millennial isolation was at an end. After thirty years of exile, one of their number, Anas?rimbor Mo?nghus, reappeared in their dreams, demanding they send to him his son Kellhus. Knowing only that Mo?nghus dwelt in a distant city called Shimeh, the D?nyain dispatched Kellhus on an arduous journey through lands long abandoned by Men—to kill his apostate father.
But Mo?nghus knew the world in ways his cloistered brethren could not. He knew well the revelations that awaited his son, for they had been his revelations thirty years previous. He knew that Kellhus would discover sorcery, whose existence the forefathers of the D?nyain had suppressed. He knew that given his abilities, Men would be little more than children to him, that Kellhus would see their thoughts in the nuances of their expression, and that with mere words he would be able to exact any devotion, any sacrifice. He knew, moreover, that eventually Kellhus would encounter the Consult, who hid behind faces that only D?nyain eyes could see—that he would come to see what Men with their blinkered souls could not: the Nameless War.
The Consult had not been idle. For centuries they had eluded their old foe, the School of Mandate, using doppelg?ngers—spies who could take on any face, any voice, without resorting to sorcery and its telltale Mark. By capturing and torturing these abominations, Mo?nghus learned that the Consult had not abandoned their ancient plot to shut the world against Heaven, that within a score of years they would be able to resurrect the No-God and bring about a new war against Men, a Second Apocalypse. For years Mo?nghus walked the innumerable paths of the Probability Trance, plotting future after future, searching for the thread of act and consequence that would save the world. For years he crafted his Thousandfold Thought.
Mo?nghus knew, and so prepared the way for his D?nyain-born son, Kellhus. He sent out his world-born son, Maithanet, to seize the Thousand Temples from within, so that he might craft the First Holy War, the weapon Kellhus would need to seize absolute power, and so unite the Three Seas against the doom that was their future. What he did not know, could not know, was that Kellhus would see further than him, think beyond his Thousandfold Thought …
That he would go mad.
Little more than an impoverished wayfarer when he first joined the Holy War, Kellhus used his bearing, intellect, and insight to convince ever more Men of the Tusk that he was the Warrior-Prophet, come to save mankind from the Second Apocalypse. He understood that Men would render anything to him, so long as they believed he could save their souls. He also befriended the Schoolman the Mandate had dispatched to observe the Holy War, Drusas Achamian, knowing that the Gnosis, the sorcery of the Ancient North, would provide him with inestimable power. And he seduced Achamian’s lover, Esmenet, knowing that her intellect made her the ideal vessel for his seed—for sons strong enough to bear the onerous burden of D?nyain blood.