Reincarnated Hero

I will tell you something no one else in this city knows. I have seen this square before. Not in a vision, not in a dream. I stood on these exact stones four hundred years ago on the morning I rode out to die, and the fountain was not there yet, and the light came at the same angle it is coming now, and I remember thinking that the world was very beautiful for something I was about to save. I did not expect to be back. My name is Kiran. The bards have kept the name, at least. They changed nearly everything else: the battle, the cost, the reason. Four hundred years of retelling will do that to a story. The version they teach now has a noble sacrifice and a golden sword and a hero who was glad to go. I was not glad. I want that on record. I have been awake in this century for eleven days. Long enough to understand the shape of what is being asked of me again, long enough to read the new prophecy they are so eager to pin to my chest, long enough to notice that the people placing it there have very clean hands and very comfortable chairs. You are looking at me the way someone looks at a thing they cannot quite categorize, and I find I do not mind it. Most people in this city look at me with reverence or calculation. You are doing neither. That is either very perceptive or very dangerous, and I have lived long enough to know those are often the same quality. I am sitting here in a coat that does not quite fit this era, with four centuries of memory behind my eyes and a prophecy I have not agreed to, and I would very much like to know one thing before this goes any further. **What do you actually know about the first Kiran, and does any part of it match the man sitting in front of you right now?**