Your first vision, and thus your gift of prophecy, usually manifests sometime around your coming of age. Some have it early, the youngest I've ever heard of was a woman who experienced hers at the age of eight. Others are given more time. You'll occasionally hear of someone claiming they've had their first vision in their early twenties, but that's almost always a hoax. They want the advantages of being a prophet without understanding the cost that carries. Most recant and take the standard punishment of twenty lashings after one week of serving the role.
The majority find it somewhere in their early to mid teens, and despite outreach efforts by the different monasteries and churches, one out of every three young prophets go mad after that first glimpse of their death. A few lucky ones immediately kill themselves. Which, when you consider all the ramifications of what that means, you find yourself staring out into the dark and questioning the difference between gods and demons after all. I was called on to one such scene not long into my Walk. The boy had just celebrated his 13th passage a few weeks before, and his mother came home to find him with his head shoved into the garbage press, a terse note as his only bare matter of fact explanation. I stood there staring at his corpse, and I could see it in my minds eye. He's sitting there, all the hope of the world laid out before him, the normal concerns of his age - school and love, pride and fear, and suddenly he gets the first splitting headache, the fire in his very veins, and all he sees is himself a few minutes later with his brains splattered on the floor. As soon as it's over, he already knows exactly what he needs to do. Probably didn't even have time to question it.
No, I'm not going to tell you what mine was. Roland, that's the question every workaday yokel wants to ask. I've attained the years to see it coming. That awkward look in their face, they lick their lips and look like they'd rather be defecating in their trousers than have this conversation, but there's also some blaze in their eyes that says they simply don't have a choice. They need to ask it. Sometimes I'll give them my favorite answer. "Well, truth to be told, I'm killed by the guardsman five minutes after strangling you to death for asking me that." But usually, I just give them a blank stare and then look away. They eventually eat their shame and slink off. They know we pay the heavy price as it is.
After I had my first vision, they came with regularity after that. I was blessedly pulled away to one of the mountaintop retreats and a kind friar taught me how keep the pain at bay. At least enough that I could still manage to eat and occasionally sleep. I never converted to his faith, but I still say a prayer to Blessed Darkness every day thanking whatever is out there for the kindness of that old man. He was killed a few weeks later for sleeping with a farmer's wife. But he did good work in the time that I knew him.
After I completed the initial training, I followed The Path, and went to the city to learn from the tutelage of some of the master prophets. They taught us divination and control, how to discern exactly what the visions were saying beyond the immediate impression. We were also trained in our oaths and duties. How we would be called to serve all. That we might select even military service, but that we must share our visions with any who asked. And perhaps most terrible of all, we were doomed to Listen. We had a duty to hear the bemoanings and fears of any slack jawed mingcrut that could put together two words to express some fear or curiosity about the world we lived in, and offer them only the most loving of advice. This is pain alone, explaining those miscreants who would rather be lashed in the public square than have to keep Listening to the private confessions of their neighbors. But for a true seer, these confessions always brought on their own visions. Not to see the future, but we are forced to feel all of the fear and confusion along with the person. Their own personal little empath for a moment. The holy teacher said it was so we could truly show the gods love to each person. I think it's just one more proof that the gods hate us for whatever reason,.
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