Varsellis Lane was buzzing with talk.  Though it was far past the cryer's call of 2 in the morning, all races were out and about, conversing in small and medium groups, hoods drawn close and glances thrown furtively at each other.  Certain people would flit from one group to another, trying to find more facts and piece the puzzle together, only finding speculation and heresay.

One fact that remained constant was the arrival of the woman, looking far into the process of rearing the child that was within her belly.  She had run screaming madly up to the bishop's house, pounding on the door until the holy man of Pelor opened the heavy oak portal and looked down at her as she fell to her knees, begging for forgiveness and asylum.  The bishop, not knowing the woman from Eve but knowing a troubled soul when he glimpsed one, pulled the woman inside.  She was soaked and filthy, and her dress was torn in many places, but none looked to be by animals.  The bishop's wife came forth to take the woman to the bath, who shook her head and simply stated "it's coming, it's coming, the gods save us all it's coming..."

Both the bishop and his wife ignored the woman's rantings as they placed her on their hearth and examined her.  The bishop's wife gasped as she looked between the woman's legs and saw the child was already crowning, a tuft of golden blonde hair matted to the baby's scalp by blood and dirt all the same.  It only took one push, and the baby was free of its confines, and crying loudly.

It was a boy.  The new midwife wiped the baby off, and wrapped him in a blanket before offering it to the mother.  The woman's eyes widened and her mouth twisted into an unholy 0 as she shrieked "DARK SUN!  NO!  THE DARK SUN!" before she stiffened and fell back to the floor, the look of abject terror on her face frozen there, still staring at the baby who had ceased crying at the moment his mother died.

The Bishop, who had watched this going on, grasped a vial of holy water in his hand and walked towards his wife, dripping some onto his hand and thumb.  The baby squirmed a bit, but as the bishop applied his thumb to the child's forehead, there was no burning, no smell of scorched flesh, only a dark mark from the dirt the bishop had accumulated from the dead woman while holding her down during childbirth.  

"What shall we call him?"  The tenor of his voice echoed a bit too loudly in his own house, so he said it again, this time softer.  His wife looked at him, then at the baby.  

"What his mother called him.  Sol Darkaven......."