The Powers Bestowed: Origins

In 1979, Jason Beannú Elias was playing dive bars in Reno, Nevada. He had no idea he was about to become one of the most powerful beings in the world.

Neither did the four men beside him. The ones who would become his Brotherhood, his warriors, his brothers in the truest sense of the word. To the world, they were just a hard rock band called Battle Cry, five musicians with more talent than anyone had a right to. To an enemy who had been anticipating their generation for nine centuries, they were something far more dangerous.

All it took was one old man, one wooden box, and one night in a San Diego hotel room to prove it.

Singer Connor Braydee couldn't silence the flood of voices suddenly crashing through his mind. Guitarist Ricky Strathan blinked and found himself across the room without having moved. Bass Player Erik Hahn touched a table, and it collapsed like paper. Keyboardist Nathan Dallenger burned from the inside out. And Jace — their drummer, their anchor — died on the hotel carpet, rose in a column of living light, and came back to himself with an ancient voice echoing in his bones.

*"You are the Guardian of Aelin..."*

The next morning, a man named Sidney Greene stepped over the door Erik had pulled clean off its hinges and began to explain what none of them yet had words for. Five musicians. Five titles older than any nation they had ever played in. Five amulets that could not be removed until their work in this world was finished.

They didn't ask for this destiny. None of it. But the world had been waiting nine hundred years for them to arrive.

*The Powers Bestowed: Origins.*