In a chamber lost to time, where light feared to tread and shadows clung like memory, a single candle burned. Its flame danced not with air, but with magic—silver, slow, and ancient. The walls were stone, etched with runes that pulsed like a slumbering heartbeat. And in the center of the chamber, she waited.
Robes of tattered starlight draped her form, face veiled in obsidian silk. The Oracle of the Rift sat still upon her throne of roots and bone, her blind eyes turned toward the trembling weave of fate before her. Threads shimmered across the vast loom in front of her—gold, crimson, violet, and jade—twisting and writhing toward a center they did not yet see.
"They move," she whispered, voice brittle as cracked parchment. "The flame awakens. The frost stirs. The earth coils. And the shadow listens."
She raised a frail hand. Runes ignited in response, four of them—each distinct, each old as the realms themselves. They hovered above her palm, flickering like the last light before dusk.
"So young," she murmured. "So unaware of the storm they carry."
Outside the sealed chamber, winds howled. Not natural winds, but those that came when the realms whispered of war. When rulers grew restless. When bloodlust crept back into forgotten corners of the world.
The Oracle turned her head as if hearing something far away. Her lips curved into a grim, knowing smile.
"The world has forgotten what balance costs," she said. "And it will remember through them."
A moment passed, long and still.
Then, the candle sputtered. The runes vanished.
And deep in the bowels of the Demonlands, the chains around a dark throne stirred, echoing the silent call of a father whose son would soon awaken.