Prologue: Cinders Of A Forgotten Past

  Long before the fall...

  The world had not yet burned.

  Humanity stood at the edge of its golden age—drunk on discovery, driven by ambition, and blind to consequence.

  Magic, ancient and dormant, had slept within mankind for generations. It was pure, primal, and buried deep in the soul. Soul magic. Rare and sacred, it reflected the true essence of its wielder—a mirror to one's innermost self.

  But it could not be learned.

  Only unlocked.

  For some, it awakened in vengeance, granting powers laced with death. For others, in mercy, revealing healing hands. No two awakenings were ever the same.

  And that made it all the more dangerous.

  But humanity has never been content with rarity.

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  With the rediscovery of soul magic came a hunger for more. They turned to ancient myths and forgotten tomes—seeking what came before.

  They unearthed a long-buried art:

  Eldrune—a fusion of spellcraft and runes.

  Old magic reborn.

  Unlike soul magic, Eldrune could be studied, practiced, and mastered. It spread like wildfire across the world—in schools, in laboratories, on battlefields.

  And still, it wasn’t enough.

  The brightest minds sought to push further, to merge the arcane with the empirical.

  From this obsession came The Warp.

  A brutal hybrid of science and magic, the Warp didn’t bend space—it ripped it apart. Shattered it. Opened bleeding windows into other dimensions.

  And for a time, humanity ascended.

  They harvested strange worlds, reached into distant realms, and called themselves gods.

  But the Warp wasn’t a door.

  It was a scream.

  And something heard it.

  Beings vast and unknowable, older than time, turned their gaze toward Earth—not out of curiosity, but fear... and purpose.

  For within their ancient archives lay designs for a forbidden creation:

  The Nytherion Core.

  A key meant to unlock sealed horrors. The design was complete—save for one thing.

  Pure soul magic.

  The one gift humanity possessed.

  So they came.

  Not as gods.

  Not as conquerors.

  As harvesters.

  And humanity, for all its ambition and flame, was still young. Their magic was new. Their weapons untempered. Their defenses nonexistent.

  The invasion was swift.

  Cities crumbled beneath fire and steel.

  Voices were drowned in machine-song.

  And the ashes of mankind were bound in chains.

  In time, they came to be called the Ashbound—stripped of freedom, drained of purpose. Their very souls burned as fuel for the Nytherion Cores.

  But the cores were not power—they were keys.

  Keys to awaken the Soulgraves—ancient dungeons buried within every world, sleeping since the first collapse of time. Sealed by ancestors long forgotten, they should have never been touched.

  Now, they stir.

  And from their depths crawl abominations beyond reason. The world fractures. Reality rots.

  And so began a war that would never end.

  Thousands of years later...

  In the deepest, forgotten corners of the Ashbound, something stirs.

  A hunger born not of hope, but of pure, boundless greed.

  And with it, the end of silence.