Year 15,000 BCE – Cycle 6, Month 1
Long before the silver walls of Westfield were raised, the Westery Plains had known only the law of tooth and claw. Fox and wolf, raven and bear — their wars were counted not in seasons, but in generations, and the soil drank freely from each.
Yet in the oldest scrolls, written in ink that shimmered like frozen starlight, there was a verse never sung aloud:
> When the storm swallows moon and sun, two shall be born beneath its eye.
Their blood shall wake the bones of the First Age,
And their breath shall call the war that never ends.
Most called it a relic of a forgotten cult. Others called it dangerous truth. The wisest called it both.
In Cycle 6 of the year 15,000 BCE, the signs began to stir. The Elemental Poles shifted. The winter sky bled lightning. The clans grew restless, sharpening their blades not for border raids, but for something greater — something final.
Far to the north, the wolves howled to an ancient rhythm. To the east, ravens whispered to the wind. Even the bears, slow to rise, began to move.
And in the heart of Westfield, the Duke's lover labored through a storm that rattled the bones of the keep. None yet knew that the first cry of her children would be answered by a thousand war horns, nor that their names would be etched into history's longest shadow.
But the old prophecy knew.
And it had already begun to wake.