For a thousand years, the world of Aethelgard had known a fragile peace. The Great Calamity was a distant myth, a bedtime story about a dark Sovereign and his court of captive goddess-queens, a cautionary tale against unchecked ambition. The old gods were silent. Magic had settled into predictable patterns, confined to kingdoms of sun, stone, and steel. It was a comfortable, reasonable, and terribly boring age.
And deep beneath the earth, in the shattered, lightless ruins of a forgotten obsidian palace, Lord Valerius Malakor, the very same Sovereign of that myth, was slowly, excruciatingly, coming to a conscious thought: This is an unacceptable state of affairs.
He had been betrayed. Defeated by an alliance of sentimental, self-righteous "gods of order" who had objected to his rather pragmatic and, in his opinion, aesthetically beautiful method of empire-building: the acquisition of powerful, fascinating women as pillars of his divine rule. They had shattered his empire, scattered his collection, and sealed him in the core of a world that had then promptly tried to forget him.
His awakening was not a glorious return. It was a slow, agonizing coalescence from pure, resentful shadow. The final seal on his tomb had been cracked not by a grand prophecy, but by a bumbling team of university archeologists from the surface, whose leader had the academic misfortune of nicking the final warding rune with a hand-trowel.
Their sudden, bright, and frankly terrified life-forces were the first real meal he'd had in a millennium. He did not kill them. That was a messy, inefficient act. He simply… absorbed them. Their memories, their fears, their pathetic little hopes, and, most importantly, a full, high-definition data-stream of the current state of the world. It was a world ripe for a hostile takeover.
"Heliopolis," he mused, testing a new voice on a new tongue, the name of the nearest, and brightest, beacon of power rolling off it with a connoisseur's satisfaction. "The City of the Sun. Ruled by a Sun-Blessed Oracle named Seraphina. Chaste. Dutiful. Powerful." A slow, predatory smile, the first in a thousand years, stretched across his handsome, newly-formed features. "A magnificent, and deliciously ironic, foundation stone for a new collection."
He stood, shaking the dust of ages from a perfectly tailored coat of solidified shadow. The boy who had been buried was gone. The god was awake, he was hungry, and he was going shopping.
----
In the pristine, sun-drenched heart of Heliopolis, a city carved from white marble and sustained by an unwavering faith in the Great Light, Seraphina felt a sudden, violent chill. She stood in the Sanctum of the Orb, a vast, open-air chamber at the apex of the city's highest temple. Before her, a sphere of pure, solidified sunlight, the city's divine battery and the source of her power, pulsed with a gentle, reassuring warmth.
She was the Oracle, but she was also the warden. For two hundred years, she had been bound to this place, her life-force fueling the Aegis of Light, a shimmering, golden shield that protected their holy city from the horrors that lurked in the Unwritten Lands. She was a saint, a queen, and a prisoner. Her life was a study in serene, sacred duty.
Today, her communion with the Light was… violated.
She had reached out with her mind, as she always did, to feel the gentle, rhythmic breathing of her city. Instead, she was met with a psychic scream. A fleeting, horrifying vision of a dusty, lightless tomb. Then, a pair of starless, twilight eyes, glittering with an ancient, cold, and utterly shameless amusement. And finally, a single, possessive, and blasphemous thought, a thought that was not hers, but that felt like it was branded directly onto her soul:
A magnificent cornerstone. The Pillar of Light for my new court.
The vision shattered. Seraphina stumbled back from the Orb, her hand flying to her chest, her heart hammering against her ribs. The feeling was not just of being watched. It was of being… appraised. Like a beautiful vase in a collector's shop. A prized mare at an auction.
"What was that?" a deep voice rumbled. Captain Kaelen of the Silver Spears, her personal guardian and the commander of the city's elite temple guard, strode to her side, his hand resting on the hilt of his sun-forged blade. He was a man of simple, direct faith and monumental strength, a living embodiment of the city's unyielding principles. "Oracle? Your light… it wavered."
Seraphina straightened, her face a mask of practiced, divine calm, but her mind was a whirlwind of terror. "A shadow," she said, her voice a low, steady thing that defied the frantic beating of her heart. "A shadow has returned to the world."
She looked out from her sanctum, at the sprawling, perfect city below, at the thousands of faithful souls whose lives and beliefs were now in her hands. She did not know what was coming. A demon? A monster? The whispers of an old, forgotten god?
She only knew one thing for certain. It was coming for her. And its ambition felt as vast, as cold, and as absolute as the endless, dark spaces between the stars.
"Kaelen," she commanded, her voice ringing with the authority of a queen, not just a priestess. "Fortify the city walls. Alert the Spears. And send our fastest rider to the Iron Citadel. Tell Lord Vorlag that the ancient pact is being called upon."
"What shall I tell him we are fighting?" Kaelen asked, his own face grim.
Seraphina met his gaze, the chilling, possessive memory of those twilight eyes burning in her own. "Tell him," she said, her voice dropping to a near-whisper, "that the Calamity was not a myth. And that its gaze has fallen upon us."
----
The world of Aethelgard was a beautiful, predictable chessboard, populated by earnest, self-important pawns. Lord Valerius Malakor, disguised as a common traveler with a handsome face and a charming, easy smile, strode into a bustling market town on the outskirts of Heliopolis, the pure, unadulterated scent of mortal hope and belief a delightful, cloying perfume in the air.
He bought a fresh apple from a street vendor, took a bite, and savored the taste. It was vibrant. Alive. He had forgotten the simple pleasures. He remembered his first harem. The Empress of the Whispering Sands, who tasted of spice and dry wine. The Nymph Queen of the Azure Depths, who tasted of salt and longing. All of them, a collection of unique, wonderful, and powerful flavors. This world, he decided, had a great deal of potential.
But a collection must be curated. A harem must be… exclusive. He had rivals in his old life. He would undoubtedly have them in this one as well. Ambitious kings, brutish warlords, and other, lesser collectors of concubines who would need to be… dissuaded.
His gaze fell upon a young, swaggering nobleman, loudly boasting to his friends about his own recent "conquests."
Valerius simply smiled, his eyes glittering. The game was not just about collecting the queens. It was about systematically removing all the other players.
His journey to Heliopolis would not be a direct one. He would take his time. He would reacquaint himself with the textures of this new, vibrant world. And he would remind the loud, arrogant, and foolish little men of this era of a single, simple, and ancient truth: that the most beautiful, most powerful, and most desirable treasures in all of creation… belonged only to him. His hunt for a queen had just begun, and the first, necessary, and deeply enjoyable step was to eliminate the competition.