Chapter 1
Prologue: The Whisper of the Ages
The stars trembled as the prophecy stirred once more.
In the heart of the Forgotten Library, where the dust of lost centuries blanketed tomes no living hand had touched, a single candle flickered. The Old Librarian sat hunched over his desk, his ink-stained fingers tracing the fragile parchment before him. His hollow eyes, clouded by time and curses, fixated on the words that had doomed countless before them:
“Every 10,000 years, darkness rises, and six are chosen to stand against it.”
The cycle was beginning again. He could feel it in his bones, hear it in the whispers of the past. Six had been marked. One would betray. One would fall. And the world, once more, would teeter on the edge of oblivion.
The Librarian exhaled slowly, lifting his gaze toward the towering bookshelves where the stories of past Sixes lay locked away. No one would ever read them. No one could. For history had always been rewritten, each cycle erased from memory, leaving only echoes for him to bear.
A sound—a breath of wind where none should be—made him turn.
The spirits had arrived.
“They are coming,” the voices murmured, barely louder than the shifting pages of an unseen book.
The Librarian closed his eyes, his heart heavy with the knowledge that this time, perhaps, the cycle would not end in victory.
