Prologue of the End

This is a story about the end of the world.

A lonely light burns in the night. The small candle flickers in an ocean of darkness. Shadows snap at the wavering flame, which does not yield. It burns in stubborn defiance, casting its glow across the room. Trembling red light grazes the surface of a heavy, time-worn table.

A hand appears, steadying an ancient golden fountain pen. It dips into ink that shimmers beneath the flame’s reflection. The pen touches the page, releasing its black stream onto parchment pale as mountain peaks.

A massive tome. Only a few hundred pages are still blank; more than half the book has already drunk the ink, swallowing words of days gone and memories long forgotten.

A man sits at the table, wrapped in shadow. His face is hidden, veiled like the moon behind clouds. Only his bare right arm is visible, the fading light clinging to it with the fragile warmth of a dying autumn night. The empty pages begin to come alive.

A conflict as old as my existence seeks its end. In a few days, everything will be over. Only a handful of the protagonists in this tale I am about to share with you, dear reader, still walk among the living.

Death is hunger, never sated. History is a cycle—endless, merciless—of human folly and human daring, forever dreaming of new worlds, better places, and would-be elysiums. A circle of failures and of corruption by weakness, by the very gift of life, and by all its beauty and temptation.

This conflict has sought to consume Terra three times already. Now it gathers speed once more, ready at last to reach its conclusion. The conclusion of a story about immortality, about freedom of choice, about whether humankind should wield the power of gods.

I weep for you, beautiful Terra. I weep for you, ancient city of Tinechor. I weep for you, Quelgan, proud metropolis above the sands. I weep for you, borderless Quinping. For I know too well what the coming days will bring.

I am the Historian, and I know how history ends.

This final tale must be written. Everything is at stake.

But before I tell of the last battle—the struggle of three men and four women, burdened with ancient souls and driven by pain, ambition, love, and revenge—I must return to where it truly began: at the moment when the end of the Second Age became inevitable.

The fourth month of the year 560 A.R. of the Second Age. Here begins the fourth, and last, of my chronicles.

It is the story of Gael Dion, the Third Bringer of Doom. His is a world that dreams of chaos and greatness.

It is also the story of a family of three—Raziel, Kaguya, and Jon. Their journey is a nightmare written in tears and blood.

I am the Historian. For two thousand years I have watched and recorded. But now, at last, the end of history looms before me.

The man was lost to darkness, a nacre adrift upon a black ocean. The floor mirrored the infinity of night. Something seemed to stir beneath its surface—like screams trapped in glass, spilling soundlessly into the void. Unbroken reflections stretched in every direction, surrounding him with endless copies of himself.

He wore a long black jacket that reached almost to his knees. Small buttons lined both sides, each shaped like a sun, thirteen spikes radiating from a female face at its centre. Tears streamed down the sun’s right cheek, but a smile graced her mouth. The jacket hung unbuttoned, revealing beneath it a deep red waistcoat adorned with the same buttons.

His brown hair fell naturally backward, almost to his shoulders. A short beard framed his face, shaved close on both cheeks but left longer around the chin. His eyes were closed. A tattoo covered the left side of his face: the same sun as on his buttons. The sun’s face lay across the left eyelid. The right side of his face remained untouched, free of the black, crying sun that must smile.

A shiver coursed through him, like a ripple disturbing the calm surface of a lake. A barely noticeable flicker passed through the fabric of the dark room that was no room. It was as if the man crowned by the sun were not truly there, but merely a lingering memory taken shape.

He opened his eyes—deep brown and all-consuming, amber and unwavering—bearing both the warmth of death and the temptation of untold pain. His gaze wandered through the dark room that was no room. He glanced at his own reflections on the ground and smiled.

How lovely he was to look at.

He raised his right hand to his eyes. He stared at the palm almost yearningly, brimming with desire. Suddenly, a bright purple flame flared within it, casting shadows that danced across his face and escaped over the mirrored ground, brushing past dozens of twisted reflections, a myriad of flames swallowed by the night.

“Lord of Dreams, I call you.”

The flame in his hand coiled into a ball, straining to contain the energies within. Tiny purple tongues of fire flared outward in every direction for fleeting moments before snapping back inside. The ball seemed impatient to implode—until it did, as it had to.

Slim, arrow-like arms of fire erupted, shooting in all directions—thousands of them, hundreds of feet long—unceasing, tethered firmly to his hand.

“Lóre, I call you.” He did not yell; he spoke with confident calm.

A rupture echoed through the mirrored room of darkness that was no room, like glass shattering under a great weight. Something stirred. The flames snapped back into the ball in an instant, a frightful retreat. Cracks shot across the endless ocean of mirrored night, converging from every direction toward the man.

His reflections on the ground twisted into ugly shapes—elongated, torn from the glorious sun they had once emanated from—as if the void itself had tried to swallow them whole.

Distortion or premonition?

The ball of flames simply ceased—a memory erased, a fleeting thought forgotten. His hand dropped, empty.

He looked into the thick fog of darkness that was the sky in this world of nothingness—this room that was no room. Excitement spread across his face, eclipsing the sun that adorned it. His mouth parted slightly, hiding a smile charged with desire for the long-imagined moments yet to come.

“Why did you enter my domain, child? Are you so eager to die?”

It was a deep voice, calming and fatherly, yet otherworldly, echoing within itself, dark and unfathomable.

“Die? Why, no!” the man smiled. “That would be quite inconvenient.”

“Then you ought never to have come to this prison.”

“But how else would I be able to offer my bargain? A peddler cannot help but visit his customers.”

“You mock me with your smiles. You taunt me with your confidence. You know who I am, yet you are not afraid? Good!”

The fog in the sky began to spiral into wild swirls of darkness before the man. A single lock of hair hanging over his left ear was pushed back by strong winds, and his unbuttoned jacket danced with excitement. The storm of fog collapsed into nothingness.

In the space where the swirls had been, a creature appeared. Over eight feet tall, hovering above the ground by a fingerbreadth. Its entire body was a maelstrom of black and purple—no real cloth, no real flesh—just a thought.

“Tell me then, little peddler, of this bargain you have for the Lord of Dreams.” Lóre’s mouth was a jagged hole, the entrance to a shattered cave, glowing with purple flames.

The man bowed before the creature. “Gladly.”

As he rose again, Lóre’s long fingers extended toward him, touching his chin before gliding upward across his cheek and resting on his left eyelid where the crying sun laughed.

“The Star of the Thirteenth Sun…”

The man smiled, as he always did. He did not know fear or hesitation. “My blessing and my curse.”

The Lord of Dreams laughed once. The sound travelled across the room that was no room like a morose gong.

“I want to set you free, Lord of Dreams.”

“And what do you want in return, child?”

The most charming of smiles.

“To conquer the world, of course.”