AFTERWORD

And finally …

Deep in the heart of the Korthaen Blight, eight streams of light united in the center of a city. Once called Karolaen, now Kharas Gulgoth, the city existed as tomb and prison, maintained for one purpose: to imprison a corrupted god of darkness and oblivion with eight chains of light.

One of those lights had been failing. The same light always failed eventually, the same light always dimmed, each time sooner than the last. Maintaining the chains around a prisoner—one removed from the universe itself—was a strain capable of dimming the very stars in the sky. It couldn’t be maintained forever, but that light hadn’t yet failed. That one weak link wouldn’t have failed for another fifty or so years, if it had followed the pattern.

But we’ll never know.

Far to the north, a young man wielding Urthaenriel smashed what he thought was a Cornerstone. But since he had been deceived, what he destroyed instead was an ancient mechanism. A device whose sole purpose had been to feed a single stream of light to a site thousands of miles away, to the center of Kharas Gulgoth.

And so, a stream of light that should have lasted at least a few more decades flickered, dimmed, and finally died.

Eight chains became seven.

The number could not hold.

As a distant earthquake rumbled through the land, waking morgage from their beds, the system broke down. A single link in a corrupted god’s chains snapped.

Vol Karoth opened his eyes.