Chapter 1
Before the names of Avi and Rowen were ever whispered by the wind, and long before the Great Shards fell, there were the Deathly Isles. They were not then the jagged, haunted rocks of today, but a kingdom of emerald peaks and silver rivers. Over this realm sat the Four Kings, a brotherhood of iron and gold who ruled with a heavy hand and a thirst for glory.
These were the days of High Chivalry. A King did not simply sit; he moved. King Aethelgard spent his moons traversing the mud-slicked roads of the lowlands. There, he would find the lowliest of squires—boys who had spent their lives tilling the earth with rusted hoes, for the iron tractors of a later world were but a fever dream of the future—and he would strike them upon the shoulder with his heavy blade, Soul-Render. “Rise, Sir Galen,” he would roar, the smell of horse-sweat and ozone filling the air. To be knighted by the Four was to be given a life of war, but also a seat at the table of plenty.
They built cathedrals that pierced the clouds and granaries that stayed full through the bitterest winters. They held Great Games where men wrestled bears and poets sang until their throats bled. King Osmund, the Builder, spent forty years carving a city into the side of the Obsidian Peak. He cared not for the cost in gold or bone. He simply wanted a monument that would outlast time itself. "It is a pile of hell-fire and stone," the peasants would whisper in the taverns, marveling at the glowing spires that lit the night for fifty miles.
But kings are rarely content with what they have.
While the Isles prospered, the Four Kings grew arrogant. They forgot the feel of the soil and the grit of the hoes that fed their armies. They spent their days in high towers, debating the nature of the stars. King Malakor, the eldest and most shadowed of the four, grew tired of the petty squabbles of men. He watched the others knight their favorites and feast upon the fat of the land, and he felt a cold, biting hunger.
"This is all crap," Malakor spat one evening, casting a golden goblet against the marble floor of the Great Hall. His brothers looked up from their wine, startled by the venom in his voice. "We knight these peasants and build these towers, yet we still grow old. We still bleed. We still rot in the ground like the very worms we tread upon."
The other kings laughed, for they were drunk on peace. But Malakor was not. He retreated to the deepest cavern beneath the Deathly Isles, a place where the air tasted of sulfur and the rocks groaned under the weight of the sea. There, he began his dark work.
He did not use hammers or saws. He used the breath of the dying and the light of a solar eclipse. For seven years, he toiled in the silence. He gathered the ancient energies of the Isles—the raw, pulsing power that lived in the roots of the world. He pressed these forces together, tighter and tighter, until the very air began to scream.
The result was the Crystal of the All-Power. It was not a gem of beauty; it was a jagged, pulsing shard of violet light that seemed to eat the darkness around it. When Malakor first held it aloft, the ground shook so violently that the farmers in the fields dropped their hoes and fell to their knees, certain the world was ending.
"Look at this," Malakor whispered to the shadows, his eyes reflecting the violet glow. "With this, I do not need knights. I do not need brothers. I do not need the laws of men."
He walked back into the Great Hall where his brothers sat. The air grew cold. The torches flickered and died. He held the Crystal high, and for the first time in a thousand years, the Four Kings were afraid.
"Brother, put that away," Aethelgard commanded, his hand reaching for his sword. "That stone is a curse. It smells of the pit. It smells like crap and death."
Malakor only smiled. It was a thin, sharp smile that reached neither his eyes nor his heart. "It is not a curse, brother. It is the end of your world. And the beginning of mine."
With a single thought, he tapped the Crystal. A wave of violet energy exploded outward, shattering the stained-glass windows and turning the golden thrones to ash. The Deathly Isles groaned as the earth cracked open. The beautiful emerald peaks began to blacken and wither. The silver rivers turned to sludge.
The age of the Four Kings was over. The age of the Crystal had begun. And deep in the heart of the Isles, the ancestors of Avi and Rowen were born into a world of shadow, where the memory of the sun was a myth, and the power of a single stone ruled all.
