Prologue 1: Little Shadows of Fate

When the Jade Empire’s Imperial Capital fell to wrath, ruin, and betrayal portals to other, far darker and stranger realms opened. Creatures from those realms left their homes and walked the mortal plane in truth.

Not as summoned phantoms, or in temporary bodies given shape and form by the mana of sorcerers and witches. But body, mind, and soul. Their full terrible glory unleashed upon the world.

Originally, these portals were meant as part of the now dead emperor's plan for invasion. To aid the voidlings in taking control of this world. However, the emperor's plan, his slow creation of these portals, had been a project he had been forced to attend to personally.

Each one was a painstaking masterpiece that had taken centuries to craft and power.

Twelve portals, one for each of the Void Lords that had taken an interest in this world. Had his plan worked, the twelve Lords of Darkness and Entropy would have strode the world upon his ascension. They would have conquered the Jade Empire and granted the Emperor a place among them as a thirteenth member of their cabal of darkness with strength enough to enshadow the world, and challenge its gods.

But in the end, that was not his Fate.

Only seven portals activated fully. Others sputtered and spat, but in the end seven came to life, and five of the cabal strode the world. Howling their rage at the sun and the realms of light. Only to be met by dragon fire, ice claws, and death in all its many varied forms that the inhabitants of the Jade Empire glory in perfecting.

Behind these behemoths of shadow, came their lieutenants wreathed in obsidian armor, leading nearly endless hosts of violent voidlings. They were met by fire, blood, steel, chie and mana from the disordered and tattered forces of the central district, and the cold stone discipline of the army of the north. Fighting together they drove the hordes back to their shadowed realm.

Fulfilling their duty, even as they sealed the enemy's fate.

But not all of those seven portals spat lords of shadow. For many are the planes of existence, and endless are the forms and types of their inhabitants. And the emperor's masterpieces were only partially made.

Two of the functioning portals connected to other planes. And out of them came wild and strange beasts.

Many of these creatures, the strongest of them, were diminished in the process of passing through the veil of protection that the Gods of Order had erected around this world.

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Among their number were wild lords of the hunt, Fae with power old and terrible, and elves of a kind that none on this world had ever seen before. As they came through, they were all diminished.

Many came, and many fled the titanic battle laid directly at their feet. Back to their home realms, back to safety, and what passed for sanity in their strange homes.

But a few, a few remained. Enamored with the sights, sounds, and tastes of power in this mortal world.

It was a new fate they sought here, a fate they could control.

The five void lords were the first to fall. Ripped apart by Kadra’s Authority, and that of the other Kings who had come to his aid. The dragons focused their prodigious wrath on the void lord's most powerful servants and lieutenants, cutting off the heads of their armies and throwing them into chaos.

Kadra’s children, his generals, and their soldiers butchered the shadows as they had in the north for generations. Cold cut shadow, burning as surely as any flame. Ice shattered dark steel, turning it brittle and easy to break. And Winter blinded even those used to darkness, as conjured snow fell in sheets over the ruins of the empire's capital for the first time in recorded history.

But at the fringes, at the outermost edges and before Kadra and his men would get organized, dozens of shadows and aliens escaped.

Seeds of doom and destruction.

Seeds of change.

And among this group of diminished pests was an escapee. One who had been bound in darkness for too long, a slave to its every whim.

And who now was free.

***

The little shadows swarmed across the land at night, and under the cover of blackened storms conjured by cultivators and wizards in the fight. One went deep into the world, finding cousins of flame and shadow.

Some into the darkened canopy of the endless southern jungles, and there they met threats and allies of elder years. Long forgotten, and seldom remembered even by those with the longest of memories.

Others ran to the sea. Where they found serpents in the deep black. Water that had never touched sun, and ice that had never tasted winds harsh words.

Everywhere they went the little shadows found threats. And many did not survive.

But where there was danger these seeds of doom also found allies. Some merged with jungle bogs, others found cults deep under the earth to worship their new form of stone, steel, and shadow, and others found allies on dark storm covered peaks where the traitors of winter rested in deepest slumber.

Numerous were the changes these voidlings underwent. Many were the seeds of destruction that had taken root deep in this world.

And numerous were the hunters that would soon seek them.

The Freed One went to the eldest of places.

There it found only the whispers of ancient ruins that had been built on the foundations of its old home. There the freed one wept tears of bitter darkness, and empty light. There, it knew what true loneliness was. As it was the only one of its kind left in all the infinite worlds of reality.

Until a goddess appeared beside the freed one, a sad smile written bitterly on her face.

“Hello,” the old crone said. Her voice the slow, inevitable cracking of continents. “My name is Fate. And I need your help.”