The book before your eyes is the humble reconstruction of a real story that took place about a thousand years ago. You probably know this story as a legend, which has been told to you truncated and revisited in different ways; the name most frequently given to this epic is "The Child of Chaos and the Witch of the Abyss", or simply "The Child and the Witch". The events behind this story took place in what is now known as the Dark Era, due to the war that was ravaging the entire world at that time and resulted in the destruction of many records. To write the historical novel you are about to read, I based my work mainly on a collection of testimonies, contemporary to the legend we are interested in. The anonymous investigator who gathered them had named the resulting anthology "The Kingdom of Eternal Snow". In homage to this prospector of the past, I have eponymously named the book you are holding in your hands, recounting in a fictionalized way the facts behind "The Child and the Witch".

Some may wonder under what circumstances I was able to acquire this precious memento of the past that is "The Kingdom of Eternal Snow". Through my profession as a somberologist specialising in the excavation and translation of ancient texts, I have participated in recent expeditions to the ruins of the Kildava desert, at the site of the ancient city of Dana. Beneath a slab, in a room which we currently believe to have been a noble’s chamber, we found a box secured with powerful seals, whose nature was too altered to be identified with certainty. These, we believe, were intended to act as a barrier to time and weathering so that its contents could be passed on to future generations in good condition. We applied the routine alchemical protocol to break the seals and access the contents without risk of damage, as non-invasive analysis had already confirmed that it was a book. Subsequently, other researchers were able to attest to its authenticity and estimate the date of its writing in relation to our calendar (in 30 ± 5 years post-ES), using the particle frame method. The original version of this collection is currently being copied and archived in our libraries and translations will soon be available for the general public.

I have filled in the gaps in the Dark Era’s testimonies by cross-referencing other sources which I will not mention in detail in this book, but which you can find in my academic articles published in the Almagitechnoscium at the Service of the Dark Era (ASDE). During the adventure of this story’s reconstruction, my team and I embarked on a journey to the various sites of the story in the hope of finding more remains and texts. While no deeply revealing documents were discovered during this long journey — which lasted several years — I was nevertheless able to unearth other relics and artefacts contemporary to the real protagonists of the legend. These were analysed to extract as much knowledge as possible, including an innovative method of diverting divination into projections of the past, by contact with an ancient object [1].

All of these investigations have led to what I hope will be for you a fantastic journey through time and space, as entertaining as it is instructive.

I will end by drawing your attention to the footnotes that you will find throughout the story to help you understand customs from the past or from afar, depending on your origin. Please note the following shortcuts to describe the origin of a word:

(dan.) for danean, (cor.) for corentian, (alc.) for alcalinese, (bal.) for balariam, (gan.) for ganec, (holm.) for holmenese, (dangl.) for danglese, (bou.) for boustislantis.

Wishing you a good expedition,

Your very humble servant, Professor and Sourcerer Mustafa-Lam Preda,

Thirteenth day of the Blue Dune, 958 post-ES at the Academy of Ismobiel