The child was not a child. That is to say, within him slumbered something greater than what he was. In those days I knew him well. One could say that I was his best friend. His mentor, in a way. His pet. His confidant and playmate.
It's easy to see, from this vantage point, a million years in the future, long after he must be dead and gone, or at least any aspect of him that I would recognize as him, that he was destined for greatness, in the way that anything could be destined. Not that anything in this contingent and transitory universe is really destined, but that sooner or later, one such as him had to be.
I am here to testify. To say that he was real, that Niko Sirtis was once flesh and blood, and not yet a god. Or a myth.
I am Volirath.