Book One – Prologue

THE DARKNESS  crept in like a thief, claiming the light and leaving in its wake only fragmented shadows. It was an absence that did not descend, but came from deep within, where coherence failed and all that strayed was swallowed.

Broken light alone did not suffice to give it shape. Within that fractured radiance, the creature endured in perpetual flux, ever-contorting and ever-wasting like rot; drawing semblance out of foreign ruin, and yet refusing to disperse so long as change itself persisted.

To gain form, it stole from those who crossed into its realm. The shrouded phantom was nourished by the essence of the forsaken. Through what it took, it gathered into a maelstrom of chaos made corporal; a primordial terror first given form, then eyes, and then voice.

Sorcerers who sought it were blind to their instincts, mistaking its strife for shadow, and those who saw it were blinded by fear, for once the creature had captured their gaze, escape became an illusion. It pursued across dimensional planes, bending the light of their passage until every path returned to the same awaiting dark.

Sometimes, as it closed in, it unfurled arcane secrets. It spoke of the Genesters of Life. Echoes of ancient deities and forsaken realms wove through its whispers; summons of sundered orders and the divine remnants left in their ruin. Such revelations were not meant for minds of mortal measure, nor for their hunger. Those who succumbed to its allure were drawn into the Shattered Realm, where they were captured and kept and corroded into fractured creatures void of coherence and consciousness.

Dead legends speak of its eternal existence; an everlasting sentinel that has observed the ebb and flow of reflections since the birth of luminance. Age after age, it lay in wait across the ethereal divide; a siren call of the unknown behind the barrier. With each reflection it caught, it grew stronger, more tangible, and more terrible; no longer a thief of light, but the  that had learned to hunt.