Messo entered the Information Guild long before he understood what the Guild was. At six years old, he was taken from a cash-strapped orphanage in Setreed and apprenticed into the Guild’s lowest ranks. For most children, such an arrangement meant a lifetime of clerical drudgery. For Messo, it became the only home he would remember.
By twenty-two, he had become one of the brightest analytic minds in Orudara. He solved puzzles that had lingered in Guild archives for generations, seeing structure where others saw chaos. Trade patterns, weather cycles, political tremors, dialect changes—to Messo, they all spoke with the same quiet logic. His predictions earned a reputation for precision that bordered on uncanny.
But brilliance was not the only thing that set him apart. Messo possessed a dangerous kindness, a trait the Information Guild regarded as a liability. Where the Guild prized detachment, he felt responsibility. Where they insulated themselves from consequence, he considered the cost to ordinary people. Mission came second to mercy, and the Guild never entirely trusted him for it.
When the first signs of an unprecedented uprising flickered across Orudara, Messo recognized the pattern faster than anyone else—and understood, with a weight the Guild refused to shoulder, exactly how many lives the prediction would claim.