The night before the eclipse smelled of rain and ashes.
In the heart of Veyndral, the oldest kingdom on the continent, the towers of the Arcanum Citadel trembled under a storm that was not born of nature. Bolts of violet lightning crawled across the sky like serpents, splitting the heavens in jagged scars. The wind carried whispers—ancient chants that had not been heard for centuries.
On the highest spire, twelve archmages stood in a circle, their robes soaked, their eyes burning with defiance and dread. At the center of their circle lay a stone slab etched with a sigil older than kingdoms, older than memory itself. It pulsed faintly, like a dying heart.
"The Seal is failing."
The eldest archmage's voice cracked like dry parchment. His beard, once white as winter snow, was singed black by the energy leaking from the sigil.
"We have no time."
A younger mage, trembling, lifted his staff. "If the sigil shatters, the Veil will fall. The Old Ones will walk again."
The storm roared in answer, and the stone beneath them began to split.
One by one, the archmages raised their hands, pouring all their life force into the crumbling seal. Their bodies withered, their souls burned. For a moment, the storm faltered, as if the heavens themselves held their breath.
But sacrifice was not enough. The sigil cracked open with a sound like breaking glass.
From the fissure seeped shadows darker than night, coiling and twisting, hungry for flesh and freedom. A scream—neither human nor beast—pierced the sky, echoing across the continent. Villages hundreds of miles away woke in terror, for even in sleep they felt the tremor in their bones.
As the last archmage fell, his body turning to ash, his final words carried on the storm:
"The world will not remember our names… but it will remember what we tried to hold back."
Then the Citadel collapsed, swallowed in a blaze of purple fire.
And so the Age of Balance ended, not with peace, but with the shattering of a sigil that was never meant to break.
Far away, in a quiet border village where the storm did not reach, a child stirred in his sleep. On his chest, beneath his shirt, an identical sigil—small, faint, and glowing—throbbed with every beat of his heart.