Minos was found one night in the back alleys of Iridine when he was very young, covered in blood and passed out. Luckily for him, the people who found him were a kind hearted and took him into their own home. Upon reviving and cleaning the child up, the couple noticed that the boy had cuts and punctures all over his body, which they quickly tended to. When questioned about how he got the wounds, however, could not tell what fate had befallen him. His benefactors dismissed this as a result of shyness and a combination of fear and shock. But Minos never could remember what happened that night, the memory was blocked from his mind.
Through a series of coincidences and blind luck, Minos ended up staying with distant relatives who recognized him. As it turned out, he led a fairly average childhood, always learning and trying to learn new things, as any child would in Iridine, except that for the fact that sometimes his relatives talked in hushed voices around him, then would glance in his direction everyone in a while.
When Minos was about 16, his average life blew up in his face. Dark and twisted dreams haunted his nights; often he would wake up screaming into the night with the fading image of a dark man wielding a knife, or a familiar voice calling his name. And there was the blood. And the screams. His dreams were filled with them. Minos became a nervous child, always fearing to be alone or in the dark and never wanted to sleep for fear that the dreams and visions would return. One night his dream snapped into clearness for the first time:
A man breaking into a house in the middle of the night. He is successful and he pulls a wicked bloodstained knife from his sheath. He approaches the bed where a young couple and their child are sleeping. The intruder's eyes glow red. The man grins wickedly and raises his knife and brings it quickly down on the sleeping man's chest and repeats the motion repeatedly. The man's screams quickly drown into gurgles, but also wake up the young woman and child. The red-eyed man makes quick work of the mother and stalks after the child, who cowers in a corner. Instead of killing the child though, he tortures it, poking and slashing at his victim with growing cruelty. The red- eyed man might had killed the child, had it not been for the constables who burst into the room. Snarling, the red-eyed man breaks away from the constables and heads off into the night, pursued by the law. The child gets up and seeing the all the blood of his parents and of himself, runs off into the night. Darkness...
When Minos told his foster parents about his dream, shock fell on their faces. They sat the young man down and quietly told him that his dream was reality and that the couple were his parents. The red-eyed man was pursued by the constables, but he was lost somewhere in the depths of the sewers. When Minos was nowhere to be found, the worst was feared and a memorial service was held along with his parents' funeral. It was a miracle they said that he had ever been found by them.
When Minos heard all of this, his face paled, then turned crimson. Sadness, then rage, then vengeance filled his heart. All these emotions were too much for his young mind. Minos went insane, and he burst out of the house. He ran and ran, east, toward the sun, hoping that somehow, he could catch it and that it would swallow him whole. Minos never noticed that he entered the woods, or the arrow that was fired in his direction. After the arrow sunk into the back of his leg, Minos collapsed from exhaustion and pain.
When Minos awoke, he was bundled in a blanket next to a popping fire. A man in a hood was seated next to him. With a start, Minos tried to get up and run, but the pain in his leg caused him to quickly lie down again. As it turned out, the hooded man had been nearby when Minos was attacked and drove off the assailants. The man pushed back his hood to reveal the smiling weathered face of an elderly man. He asked Minos what he was doing in the woods and Minos told the old man his story. After much pondering, the man told Minos that he would take Minos as a pupil, so that he could protect himself, and one day maybe others, as the old man had done for Minos.
For five long years in the wilderness, Minos learned, he how to use the quarterstave, healing, as well as how to heal his broken mind through meditation and prayer to Ereal. The man was also a seer, and told Minos that one day he would have to face the evil he saw that fateful night his parents were killed again. Minos never learned the name of his mentor, he simply called him 'sir.' One day, mentor and pupil were attacked by a band of bandits. While they were eventually able to drive off the bandits, Minos' teacher had suffered mortal wounds. "My time has come ... you are ready to go off by yourself now..." he said with a smile before he died.
Minos buried his mentor and friend and turned to face the walls of the city of Iridine. The dreams still haunted him, and the fire of vengeance and loss for his parents and mentor burned in his heart. But somehow the city seemed to call to him. Leaning on his stave, he headed back towards the city he once knew, but now seemed strangely unfamiliar...