In this episode, we are introduced to our four heroes: Antiven, Fenrir, Rowan, and Zephi. It starts with Antiven leaving his home in the countryside to undertake his chores of the day. He first travels to a tavern in Ghost Market to pick up some wine for his wife. It is there we are first introduced to Fenrir, sitting and having a drink bright and early in the morning.

After collecting the wine, Antiven continues to the marketplace to find four robed strangers. As a member of the 997 citizens of Renthru (Antiven’s hometown), he knows everyone. These people weren’t quite fitting in. Specifically, Rowan’s interactions with Roger, a shopkeeper, made it clear that these four were out of place. Antiven intercedes and corrects the issue before continuing to the town hall.

On his way there, he gets his first hint that more is brewing in the air. A woman with black hair and blue eyes wearing regal purple, accented with golden filigree, is spotted. Still, instead, his eyes focus more on something that he is intimately familiar with: people of violence. He sees it in some of the eyes of the strangers in the town but does nothing to warn anyone.

At the town hall, he overheard Zephi talking to the town elders about the disappearance of magic from the Tyranus mountains. It had taken 744 years before severe implications of a lack of mana started to take effect. Zephi, having lived a full life so far, decided to set out and gather information to report back to his people, Gust (Woosaru).

After collecting some documentation from the town hall, Antiven starts his trip back to his home. The great bell in the town’s temple has shifted to black. Halfway from the town to his home, Antiven faced a choice. He could either turn back to help the town as he sees it on fire or head back home to save his family. He chose the latter.

Arriving too late, he sees “the blue-eyed witch” finishing off his wife with a blade, her soul traveling into some kind of urn/lantern-like device. The great black bell rings, signaling something to the blue-eyed witch. As Antiven charged at her on his horse, he was hit with power word kill and taken out of commission.

After Antiven’s death, one of the goddesses of the Duodecim comes to Elay and seeks out the three that had survived. With 999 souls collected, Rowan, Zephi, and Fenrir are all visited by Tianee (the goddess of death) and instructed to return to Antiven’s body on the first day of the first month in three years, which sets the stage for 747 ATD, the year of Tianee, where the boundary between life and death is at its most fragile.

Assembling at Antiven’s corpse, the group sees that he returns to life with the sole purpose of revenge. The four heroes became Death’s Chosen.