PROLOGUE II

“Enough of this madness!” King Grandor’s voice thundered throughout the shadowed sanctum. From among the marble columns and intricate sculptures of the holy temple, a figure materialized. She was swathed in a gossamer dress, heavy with the crimson stain of blood. Ten grim attendants, garbed in ominous leather, surrounded her, their cruel billhooks and vicious long knives pointing towards Grandor’s unease-laden soldiers. The pervading tang of charred flesh filled the room, a stark reminder of the sanctuary’s desecration. Sprawled beneath the bloodstained feet of Heilba were the lifeless bodies of the priests who had once tended to this sacred bastion and several of her own minions as well.

A chilling smile curled on Heilba’s lips as she raised an intricately-carved knife, its blade jagged like the teeth of some unholy beast. “Oh, Grandor, blind you are. The gods, they are mirrors reflecting our own selves. And yet, we partake in their cruel game. Our disenfranchisement from Tera, their merciless hand. We inhabit a realm haunted by the specter of war.” Her gaze flickered curiously toward the veiled darkness of the inner sanctum. “Their sacred teachings, I’ve deciphered them. Enlightened I stand in the midst of their deceit. I hear the crescendo of voices begging for liberation. Plunged in darkness, that was their retribution. A fate we will share unless we resist!”

Grandor’s heart sank. Struck by her words, searing like venom in his veins, he couldn’t believe his beloved was now a stranger. “Hear me out!” he pleaded, desperation etched in his voice. “You need not succumb to this darkness, we can reason it out.”

Heilba’s cruel laughter cut through the air as she regarded Grandor’s olive branch. “Follow me, my love. I will unveil for you the primordial forces, the true gods. Together we will tread the path towards salvation.”

The sacrilege falling from his wife’s lips cut through Grandor like a sharp blade. Streams of tears coursed down his face, glistening in the haunting candlelight. “Heilba, your sanity eludes you.”

A fresh wave of icy fear gripped him as the echoes of a floorboard creaking reached him. Looking towards the sanctuary’s entrance, Grandor recognized the figure descending the stairs as Tybolt, their son. Through the veiled flicker of candlelight, his blonde hair and clear cerulean eyes were unmistakable. “Tybolt! Wait, come no further!” Grandor warned, dread knotting his voice.

Heilba whirled around sharply, a sickly sweet note in her voice as she crooned, “Come, Tybolt.”

Garbed in his nightdress, Tybolt descended the ruby-carpeted staircase, rubbing his eyes sleepily. “Are you fighting again? You woke me.”

Grandor fought the urge to reach for his son, the menacing presence of Heilba’s guards kept him rooted where he stood. Meanwhile, Heilba advanced to meet Tybolt, her lips curling into a sinister, fetching smile. “Stay away from your mother, Tybolt!” Grandor implored.

“But Father, what ails you?” inquired Tybolt, his innocent gaze locked onto the concealed blade his mother slipped from beneath the voluminous folds of her dress. His instincts aflame, Grandor reached for his sword only to find a steel billhook leveled against his neck. The sudden uprising was joined by a second, and another of Grandor’s knights drove his blade into the melee. Heilba seized her shocked son, pressing the cold steel of her blade against his throat as she shouted, “Enough!”

Tybolt’s blue eyes filled with terror as he whimpered, “Mother!” His plea echoed Grandor’s paralyzing fear as Heilba’s minions cornered him, their weapons snug against his own.

“Heilba, no!” Grandor’s anguished cry filled the chamber.

“Father!” Tybolt whimpered in helpless despair.

With a quick, merciless move, Heilba yanked Tybolt’s head back, the knife pressed ominously beneath his chin. As she led him into the blackened recesses of the sanctum, fear pulsated through him. A glance back at Grandor revealed his tearful eyes, wide with dismay. As the young prince was hauled into the shroud of darkness, the battle commenced. Grandor’s pained bellow echoed through the sanctum as his fist collided with an offending guard. Steel clashed against steel, the grunts and cries punctuating his recurring call, “Tybolt!”

As Heilba withdrew the cold steel blade from the vulnerable skin of Tybolt’s throat, her voice was soothing, laced with an unnerving affection. “My endearing Tybolt, all shall be well,” she breathed. The foreboding sanctuary, seemingly shrouded in an impenetrable darkness, resonated with the unescapable clamor of battling men reverberating from the world beyond its walls. Even as the formidable roars of Grandor – as untamed and ferocious as any savage beast – permeated the chamber, Tybolt began to lose touch with reality. An icy terror gripped him, constricting his chest, as the woman he knew as his mother suddenly morphed into a potential killer. As he observed her lithe fingers, now laced with a cruel intent, clutching the lethal instrument, he was awash with confusion. The glinting blade seemed to taunt him, thirsty for his blood. In this eerie setting, the sanctuary flickered with a spectral light as Heilba ignited the altar’s candles.

Peculiar shadows, seemingly imbued with an eerie semblance of life, began to twist and gyrate in grotesque dances. Their obscure forms circled the room, brandishing macabre masks upon the wall. Tybolt felt a chill run down his spine as he thought he perceived monstrous faces leering back at him from the depth of these shadows. The child’s anxious gaze, shimmering with trepidation, inevitably returned to his mother. His breath hitched as he observed a monumental specter of blackness towering next to her, an abyssal figure that even the candlelight refused to touch.

Standing with the resplendent menace of an ascendent dragon, the phantom turned towards the terrified boy. The shadowy figure encased his mother with a tendril-like arm cloaked in tangible darkness and Tybolt gasped, connecting the dots with a newfound realization. “Do you not comprehend, my child? You are destined for greatness, to rule supreme,” she whispered, her voice a winter breeze. His lithe frame shook with unfiltered terror. “Let fear not overtake you. Foreseen phenomena attest of your boundless prospects. Look within, feel its grace, its resonating prowess shall guide your understanding,” she urged. Her eyes glittered with an uncanny fervor as she continued, “Take its hand. Accept your destiny.”

“Your words are the delusions of a lunatic,” Tybolt retorted.

With unsettling calmness, Heilba approached her son, delicately maneuvering to kneel in front of him. As the chilling touch of the deadly blade was transferred into Tybolt’s trembling hand, his mother guided his fingers to wrap around the worn hilt of the weapon. “Impertinence ill suits you, Tybolt,” she chided gently. “The entity you face is Elagate, the harbinger of your future. Acknowledge him.” As she imparted these chilling words, her hands came to rest firmly on his tiny shoulders. With a maternal smile that twisted the boy’s stomach, she whispered her directive, “End Grandor’s life.” With these bone-chilling words, she encompassed the terrified Tybolt in a suffocating embrace.

In the raw, gore-laden belly of his foe, Grandor’s senses were assaulted by the echoes of his wife’s shrieking cries reverberating from the hallowed sanctuary. Like an animal launching off its prey, Grandor expediently kicked the lifeless cadaver that impaled his blade aside and carved a path of urgency. The perpetrator of this unspeakable atrocity was none other than the treasonous lot that had set upon the men of cloth without mercy.

Exhaustion seemed a beastly yoke around Grandor’s neck as he scaled the sacred steps, bellowing “Heilba,” with the coarse grit of desperation. Shadows of despair and uncertainty gnawed at his hopes. Had Heilba woken from complacency? Was salvation a fleeting dream? Was their offspring, born of their union, mowed down by her reluctant hand? His mind swirled like a maelstrom as he neared the imposing archway, a portal to his impending reality.

Upon entering the sombre dim-lit chamber, a heart-rending tableau awaited him; his son Tybolt on bended knees cradling the limp form of Heilba. “Speak!” he commanded, his voice echoing eerily as his comrades trickled into the room. Caution guided his footsteps towards his son, whose back was a silent barrier to his questions. A creeping chill gnawed his spine when his eyes alighted on a crimson pool, his son’s eyes glistening like liquid sorrow. There lay Heilba, his once vibrant wife, eyes bulging in her final silent reproach.

“What act of madness is this?” A disbelieving roar tore from Grandor’s throat. With a shuddering push, Tybolt extricated himself from underneath his mother’s lifeless form, devoid of words, his lower lip trembling, cheeks marred by paths of grief. Silent Tybolt remained, his hand slipped away from the bloodied knife, the symbol of his sin. As it skittered across the cold stone floor trailing a macabre path of blood, Grandor could hardly fathom the horrors he beheld.

Lost in the grueling spectacle of Heilba’s untimely demise, Grandor’s jaw slackened. The line of her violent departure etched all too viscerally by her murderer.

Moments, feeling more like centuries, later, Grandor found himself looming ominously over his son, his heart a hardened anvil under the weight of his raised blade. Yet just as the edge neared its gruesome descent, a hand reached out, seizing his arm in a vice-like grip. “Hold, Grandor, he’s your blood!” Benadis’ plea echoed like a damning sentence, his all too human gaze locked with Grandor’s. The father in Grandor emerged, and his sword slipped from his grip, his towering figure collapsing onto Heilba’s remains, wrapping around her like a child clinging onto a security blanket, his anguished wails echoing through the hollow sanctuary.

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