Prologue

The dimly lit chamber flickered with the glow of slow-burning incense, its curling tendrils of smoke coiling through the air like whispers of forgotten time. A lone figure moved through the haze, methodically tending to his rituals—an ancient practice carried out by those who sought wisdom in the silence between the past and the present.

He was an old sage, though not by the standards of ordinary men. He had walked the world for two hundred years, his lifespan stretched by knowledge few could comprehend. His robes, worn yet dignified, trailed along the stone floor as he shifted from one task to the next, his hands moving with practiced precision.

As he worked, his mind drifted to the weight of history. It had been five hundred years since the last great calamity, a cycle as old as the world itself. Every five centuries, without fail, a being of unfathomable power emerged—a Scourge. Some called them monsters, others saw them as divine punishments, but all knew they were forces of destruction, reshaping the land in their wake.

There had been four. Four times had the world been broken and rebuilt. Four times had kingdoms risen and fallen. And now, five centuries had passed once more.

His hands did not falter as he began grinding a mixture of herbs and ash in a stone bowl. His thoughts shifted to the town beyond these walls—Eldergrove.

It was a place of bustling markets and winding streets, a hub of trade where merchants from distant lands gathered to sell their wares. But it had not always been so. Once, long ago, it had been little more than a cluster of shelters, a sanctuary for those who sought refuge in the shadow of the Fourth Scourge’s reign. Time had seen it grow, its foundations laid atop old fears, its people forging ahead as if history would not repeat itself.

But history always did.

He moved to the center of the chamber, stretching out his hand as he spoke a word in a language long forgotten. The air trembled, and with a shimmer of blue light, an ancient tome materialized before him, hovering just above his palm.

It was a reminder of a mystery even the wisest could not fully unravel.

A prophecy No hand had written, no scholar had recorded its verses. It had simply appeared—a message carried by forces beyond mortal comprehension. Some claimed it had been whispered on the wind, heard in a thousand tongues at once. Others swore the sky had burned with symbols only the greatest sorcerers could decipher. Whatever the truth, the message had been clear:

A Scourge will rise again.

He exhaled slowly, watching as the tome flickered with ethereal light before fading back into the void. The prophecy did not tell when. It did not tell who. It only promised that the cycle was not yet broken.

And if history was to be believed, the world would not be ready.

A soft rustling broke the silence. Footsteps.

A voice—young, uncertain—spoke from the chamber’s entrance.

“Eamon?”

At last, his name was spoken. The sage turned.

His face was calm, yet layered with unreadable depth. The flickering light from the incense cast shadows across the fine lines of age that marked his skin, each crease telling of years spent in thought. His deep-set eyes, dark and knowing, seemed to weigh unseen burdens, carrying knowledge too heavy to be shared. His lips, neither tight nor slack, held no immediate emotion, yet there was something in his gaze—something distant, as if he were looking through time itself.

The past could not be changed, and the future had not yet come to pass. But it was coming.

And the world would soon know it.