Prologue — The Sealing
Three thousand years ago, the world ended in the dark.
Not with fire. Not with the clash of armies under an open sky. It ended the way all the worst things end — quietly, far below the earth, where no one could see it happening.
The cathedral had no name. It had been old when the first elves learned to write, its black pillars wrapped in chains thicker than ancient trees, its floor carved with runes that burned a slow, sickly red. At the far end, atop a flight of jagged steps, sat a king.
He had not moved in a hundred years. He did not need to. His armies had already hollowed out three kingdoms, and the dead he left behind did his walking for him.
Then the doors broke open — and the light came in.
They came down the nave like a storm front: Cassian with a tower of blackened steel on his arm, Mira with silver fire in her hands, Joren with two curved blades, and at their head, a swordsman in battered leather with a blade that burned blue.
The King opened his eyes.
"More meat," he said, and smiled.
The battle that followed cracked the foundations of the mountain. Cassian held the line while the dead came in waves. Mira wove light into chains. Joren bled on the steps and kept fighting anyway. And the swordsman — the swordsman was everywhere at once, his blue-burning blade carving through the King's guard like it was parchment.
But the King would not fall.
"You cannot kill me," he laughed, even as the chains tightened, even as the mage's seal flared brighter and brighter. "Did no one read the pretty words on the wall? The King cannot die by mortal steel. The King cannot fall to time."
"We know," the swordsman said quietly.
He drove his blade into the floor at the King's feet — and the runes answered. Blue fire raced through every carved line in the cathedral, up the pillars, across the ceiling, and the King screamed as the seal took hold, dragging him down into the dark beneath the stone.
"You cannot kill me!" he roared, his voice already fading. "So you bury me! And one day, little swordsman — one day someone will dig me up!"
The swordsman stood over the sealed floor, breathing hard, blood running from a cut above his eye. "Then I'll be waiting."
Mira sank to her knees beside him, exhausted. "The seal will hold?"
"Forever," he said. "It was built to hold forever."
They carved the warning into the tunnel wall on their way out, in letters of fading gold:
Beware the King beneath the world. He who drank the black sun. The King cannot die by mortal steel. The King cannot fall to time. The King cannot be defeated by a single warrior.
One by one, the companions climbed toward the surface. One by one, they walked out of history.
Three thousand years passed. The mountain forgot. The kingdoms above forgot.
But the dark remembered.