[Greetings, reader. I apologise for taking advantage of this brief disruption of the Fourth Wall—the one desperate act expressly forbidden to me when I took on the mammoth task of this, my first and possibly final Narration. You may have picked up this story expecting an experience not unlike the comic books and cartoons you may have once enjoyed at another point in your personal timeline or any potential parallels. Instead, you have entered a doomed world, being fed into a repeating spiral of calamity and ruin by the actions of those within who are powerful enough to alter the flow of time itself, but not enough to see the consequences from the Outside. Unfortunately, and through no fault of yours, you have already contributed to the collapse of the multiverse by innocently flipping open the very portal through which I address you now.
I come to beg for your help, though I must also offer warnings before you delve too far within, as I have; this tale of unlikely heroes exploring not only strange worlds but time itself leads to the borders of perceivable reality, where dreams and nightmares come from and memories go when there is no one left to recall them. The secrets of ancient civilisations once thought long-lost to the annals of mythology appear to hold the key, either to annihilate reality itself or preserve it. The last Narrator, what little there was left of them, barely managed to hold the story together once upon a time. Now, like them, I am trapped in this unseen non-world for the Time Being, forced to carry on their unhappy work alone until my consciousness burns out.
Take along with you the last Narrator’s notes on those ancient civilisations and what clues their enchanted words may provide; I will serve as your mental filter for the cosmic power contained in them. Hold this knowledge in your mind as you follow the unfortunate souls living in these pages. Join me in guiding them through to the end of this chapter of their Narrative, and I will do my best to offer what little guidance I can through gaps in the Wall. Perhaps, then, reality can go on a bit longer. Perhaps, then, there will finally be a way back home.
Sálvë häzün to you on this journey, reader. We’re going to need it.]
-N-