The wind rustles on the tops of the trees as the sky turns dark, then blood red.  People of the land are seen scurrying back into their homes, some even leaving their goods at their stalls, forgotten and exposed.

"Mother, why aren't we going to market?" a young girl asks, as her mother drags her along by the elbow.

"Come child.  Come quickly.  It's the blood moon.  A bad omen."

The young mother covers her daughter's face with a kerchief and risks a look up at the sky.  A looming structure covers half the moon, darkening the sky and reddening the clouds around it.  The woman shudders and fixes her grip on her child.  She would rather go hungry for one night than to risk being out on this ominous evening.

Outside the royal walls, the people of the land of Nyo are no different.  The marketplace is abandoned in the early afternoon, but in a corner room of the smaller west palace, there is a different kind of chaos.

"Bring the cloths and another pot of boiling water!" cries a midwife.

"She's close" warns the physician.  "Don't let anyone else into the room!"

A woman lies in the center of the heated room.  Sweat drips down her temples and her plaited hair is plastered to the sides of her face.  Her coloration is pale white as she bites down on the rough canvas cloth.  Her two hands have a deathly grip on the two ropes of cloth hanging from the ceiling.

"Push, Mistress!  You must push!"

"Arghhhh!!!" the woman cries out in anguish.  

This will be her first and only birth.  She wishes only for a healthy child for she has already seen what hardships lie ahead for her soon-to-be-born son.  The woman, though in a state of distress, is exquisitely beautiful.  If she were not a fortune teller of the Kim line, she could easily be the King's Queen or perhaps a second consort.  However, fated to be abandoned by her lover, the alluring fortune teller is of a long line of infamous female seers.  

With one last push, the baby cries out, taking its first breath of air.  The woman slumps backward, exhausted from labor and she closes her eyes, breathing heavily.

"How... how can this be?" comes the wavering voice of the midwife.  "The child... the child is..."

"A healthy young boy" the physician confirms.

"But the Royal Seers have always birthed daughters!" the midwife says in disbelief.  "How could a male child be..."

But the physician is old and the midwife young.  The physician has seen and heard many things in his long life.  Looking towards the mother, the physician confirms his suspicion that the mother has known the truth for a while now.  Though the physician had been assigned to manage her pregnancy from the beginning, something had been odd about the life lines that he could feel in the fortune teller's pulse.

"It's told that once every 100 years, a male Seer can be born of the Kim line.  A rare occurrence, yes.  But if the lore is true, he will be a great Seer.  Perhaps... greater than his mother."

A tear falls from the corner of the mother's eye as the midwife is awed into silence.  A historical moment for some, but the fortune teller feels a tremendous wave of sadness for her son.