Prologue- part 3- The shattering
Deep beneath the mountain, Vaelrith made his final mistake.
He'd thought it through. Calculated every variable. Prepared for every contingency. His crystals floated in perfect formation around the Core, each one tuned to a specific frequency, each one ready to channel the power he would direct.
He raised his hands.
The working began.
At first, it was beautiful. The Core responded to his touch, its light shifting, focusing, obeying. For one perfect moment, Vaelrith felt what it would be like to hold the world in his hands—to shape fate itself, to end suffering, to create a peace that would last forever.
Then the Core pushed back.
It didn't happen slowly. There was no warning, no gradual increase in resistance. One moment, Vaelrith was in control. The next, power beyond anything he'd imagined flooded through him, through his crystals, through every channel he'd so carefully constructed.
He tried to let go. He couldn't.
He tried to pull back. The working wouldn't release him.
The Core screamed.
It wasn't a sound—not exactly. It was a vibration that moved through stone and flesh and soul, a wound in reality itself. Every Seer in the world gasped as visions flooded their minds—chaotic, contradictory, maddening. Every dragon staggered as something ancient and precious tore inside them. Every mortal who'd ever touched magic felt it ripped away, leaving them hollow and cold.
Above, the sky split.
It started as a crack above Lumina—a thin line of absolute nothing against the stars. Then it spread, branching, multiplying, until the heavens looked like shattered glass held together by nothing but memory.
The land answered.
Mountains that had stood for eternity groaned and split. Rivers of molten stone erupted from wounds in the earth. Crystal towers that had grown for centuries collapsed in screaming showers of light.
The dragons took flight—not in their usual grace, but in panic, in chaos. Families separated. Young ones tumbled from the sky. Ancient ones roared challenges at a world that no longer listened.
And in the forge, Kaelen grabbed Elara and pulled her toward the door, toward escape, toward anything but the destruction raining down around them.
"What's happening?" she screamed over the roar of falling stone.
"I don't know!" He dragged her through streets that weren't streets anymore, past buildings that crumbled as they ran, past people who reached for help that wouldn't come. "Just keep moving!"
They almost made it.
They were almost to the edge of the city, almost to the tunnels that led down the mountain, almost safe.
Then the ground opened beneath them.
Kaelen's hand slipped from hers. She saw him fall, saw his face twist with something—fear? anger? love?—and then he was gone, swallowed by darkness, and she was falling too, and the world was ending, and there was nothing she could do but scream.
---
In the heart of the Crystal Palace, surrounded by the ruins of his ambition, Vaelrith screamed.
Power coursed through him—not the controlled, directed power he'd imagined, but raw chaos, burning and transforming and remaking. He felt his body changing, his mind changing, his very soul twisting into something that had never existed before.
Light touched him and became shadow. Shadow touched him and became part of him. He was falling, always falling, through darkness that had weight and hunger and will.
The last thing he saw, before the shadows claimed his vision entirely, was the world breaking apart.
Aetherion—whole, beautiful, his—fractured into five pieces. He watched as realms that had been one tore away from each other, leaving wounds that would never fully heal. Earth, solid and heavy, pulled downward. Seer, thin as thought, drifted toward the spaces between. Dragon, wild and proud, climbed toward heights where air grew thin. Sky, caught between, spun off into endless wind.
And Shadow—the place where all the broken pieces went, where all the wounds bled, where all the darkness gathered—Shadow opened beneath him like a mouth, and Vaelrith fell into it.
He fell for a long time.
He fell until he forgot there had ever been light.
He fell until the shadows that had claimed him became him, until he couldn't remember where he ended and they began.
When he finally stopped falling, when the darkness settled around him like a throne, Vaelrith opened eyes that had become pools of absolute night and looked upon his new kingdom.
He had wanted to save the world.
Instead, he had broken it.
And somewhere, in the darkness between worlds, he began to laugh.
---
Years passed.
The five realms drifted apart. Memories faded. The old world became legend, then myth, then something that even the oldest beings doubted had ever been real.
In the Earth Realm, a child was born who would never know magic, who would learn to fight with steel and stubbornness, who would one day hold a blade forged from a fallen star.
In the Seer Realm, a child was born who would dream of skies on fire, who would see futures that made her scream, who would carry visions of a girl with silver in her hands.
And in the darkness between worlds, something waited.
It had learned patience in its long fall. It had learned that some victories require centuries of preparation, that some destinies must be guided from the shadows.
It watched, and waited, and prepared.
The world held its breath.
The story was about to begin.
End of Prologue.
*****
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