Prologue

The earth shook as if afraid, racked by the tremors and turmoil of battle. The great forests of the east were burned away, leaving only the ashen remains of trees behind. Rivers and streams dried up, causing any fortunate enough to still be alive to flee to the ocean for water. Cities were felled, mountains crumbled and even the sky was scorched by the war. It was a conflict beyond any that had come before it, and likely beyond any that would come to follow.

The Grey Lord pulled himself out of the Heart of the World — a massive hole in the ground whose bottom was invisible — and collapsed in the mud. He could smell death all around him, and he knew that he was surrounded by the bodies of people he had massacred with his own hands. They had been simple warriors, skilled with the sword but lacking any proper means with which to defend themselves against a mage. They had been burned almost to nothingness, and in truth some bodies had been reduced to little more than a limb or two.

The sound of explosions came to the Grey Lord, but he ignored them. They were insignificant in comparison to the battles he had just endured, and they would do little to change the world in any real capacity. The mage knew that battles would rage in the cities for perhaps months to come, but political matters held little importance to him. The sounds of battle came from the Mihale lands, he suspected, as the clashes in his own native Elasia had been quelled before he had properly involved himself in the conflict.

Elasia has always been like that, he thought to himself, rolling onto his back and extending a hand towards the sun. Ash filled the sky in great clouds, marring its beauty. Quick to voice their complaints, but equally swift in quelling conflict.Footsteps approached. Putting aside pain and fatigue, the Grey Lord stood just in time to seize the blade that had been about to run him through. Expending a little of the power he had left, he sent a bolt of lightning through the weapon, electrifying its wielder. He was not alone, however, but the Grey Lord evaded the pike that stabbed at him before impaling the soldier with the sword he had taken from the first attacker.

Who are these people? he asked himself, making a futile search for the memories he knew he had lost. Much had been sacrificed in order to put a stop to the war which had sought to end the world, and many of those things had come from the Grey Lord himself. I don’t know. Are they enemies? Do they know who I am?As the Grey Lord’s past faded away, leaving him without even memories of the battle he had fought so hard to win, he thought of the future. His role in things was not yet over, that much he was certain of. The master magician knew what had to be done. Just as his destruction in the Heart had made him incomplete, the world itself, chaotic as it was, was also far from whole. If it was to be saved, it would need to be mended, but that was not something which could be done easily.

Staggering to the edge of the wound in the earth, the opening of the Heart of the World, the Grey Lord extended his hand over the chasm. Even he did not fully understand the nature of the innumerable spells he cast at that moment, but they came to him as easily as breathing. He felt a change, both within himself and across the world that he had conquered during his many years of war, and he knew that it was not something that any normal person, magician or not, could even begin to comprehend.

As his strength left him, the Grey Lord slumped to the ground, safe in the knowledge that he would awake to find a new world.

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