Shara Bolasi was the First Lion, one of the three children Gaea bore to guard the world she had made. The dragon-father Nagatayora was his brother. The wolf-mother Ulvma was his sister. The three were Gaea's protectors, and they died as protectors, all within the single year of the Shattering.
Where the other two fought as their natures ran, the dragon above the field and the wolf among the mortal ranks, Shara Bolasi fought the way a lion holds ground. He took a stretch of the line in the War Against the Gray Prince and he kept it. When the rank beside him broke and ran, he did not give way with it. He held his place alone until Hykravones' advance reached him, and it killed him where he stood.
His heart's blood ran out into the earth and soaked it, and for a long time that was the whole of it. Nothing rose from the ground in his lifetime, or for many lifetimes after. Generations later the people who lived on that soil began to come up changed, carrying the lion in their blood. They became the Sharabha, who keep his two hardest habits above the rest: to put yourself between danger and the people behind you, and to never break an oath once it is spoken. The full account of that inheritance belongs to their own history.