What You'll Hear
A preview of Chapter 1
For thirty years, King Aldric held the throne of Aethelgard with an iron hand and a just heart. The kingdom prospered. The great castle on the cliff stood as a beacon of order, its green-flame braziers visible for miles in every direction. Markets overflowed. The farmlands fed millions. And at the king's side stood Ikhos — the most brilliant mind in the realm, advisor and confidant since the days of Aldric's youth.
No one questioned Ikhos. No one watched him. And that was the kingdom's fatal mistake.
On the night of the Winter Solstice, as the court feasted in the Great Hall and wine flowed beneath moth-eaten tapestries, Ikhos rose from his seat. The hall fell silent. He spoke words that had not been uttered in a thousand years — words from the age before history, when the boundary between worlds was thin and fragile.
King Aldric fell. The green flames turned violet. And through the wound in the sky, shadow creatures began to bleed into the mortal realm — formless, hungry, endless.
In the days that followed, the corruption spread like plague. The farmlands blighted overnight — wheat turned black in the field, livestock died standing up. The old graveyard behind the temple stopped keeping its dead. Skeletons clawed from the mud. Zombies shambled through the fog. The swamps to the south festered with new malice, and witch-fires burned where no huts had stood before.
And Ikhos? He walked into the Rift and vanished. Not fleeing. Not defeated. Waiting. Patient. Utterly convinced that what he had done was right.
Now the remnants of the court whisper of three artifacts needed to seal the Rift: the Blade of the First King, a prayer lost in the ruins of a sunken chapel, and a signet ring whose location no one remembers. Heroes have entered the Rift before. None have returned.
Your story begins in the Town Square of Aethelgard, where the fountain is said to weep blood on the anniversary of the Great Betrayal. The old town crier, Barnaby, will tell you the same thing he tells everyone: "Don't go north. Don't go into the woods. And whatever you do, don't look at the sky after dark."