'The world is ending.'

  That was the lone and astonishing thought which, amid the uproar, managed to hold together some small shard of sense within the mind of Draxion.

  The wind rose and raged until it became a savage tempest, as though it meant to wrench the whole forest from its roots as easily as a careless hand snaps a dry and brittle twig. The wide lavender canopy above shuddered and thrashed beneath its fury, leaves crying out together like surf upon stone. Birds took to the air in sudden terror, their wings beating hard for escape, yet that very flight became their doom, for the storm seized them and bore them away, flung helplessly into its roaring heart.

  With violent convulsions, the earth itself began to rend. Fissures tore open in the ground and raced outward in every direction, yawning wide to swallow trees, beasts, and all that strayed too near, as though the land had grown a ravenous hunger of its own.

  Mana, long accustomed to order and law, warped and twisted into wild and ungoverned displays. Forks of lightning split the sky, thunder crashing down upon the world, and waves of searing heat followed in their wake, scouring the soil and laying waste to the green life that clung to it. Shimmers of untapped power snapped and recoiled in blind fury, breaking apart and reforming again and again, driven into madness by pressure alone, with no guiding will to master them.

  Yet.

  All these calamities were as little beside the true herald of ruin, the wellspring from which they flowed. It blotted out the world entire, casting a vast eclipse over the sun and dimming even its ancient and steadfast glory. From the depths of the heavens there fell a shadow of monstrous size, a behemoth both dreadful and wondrous to behold, plunging down from the cold reaches of the cosmos.

  Those who beheld it, and lived long enough to name what they saw, believed the final hour had come at last.

  One man, instead, welcomed it with arms flung wide.

  Where fear should have driven him to flight, stillness took hold of his body, firm and unyielding. He didn't look upon the descending terror with dread or trembling. In his eyes there burned only a pure, unchained curiosity, sharp and unwholesome, bordering upon madness in its intensity.

  From where he stood, upon a mountain that loomed high above the lesser lands of the world, he could tell.

  This was no wandering astral body, no fallen star or heedless stone. It wasn't divine punishment hurled down by offended gods, nor some ancient and forbidden magis dredged up from ages long forgotten.

  It was a being.

  An existence unto itself.

  And it was coming to ground.

  ???

  Draxion Aerendyl, the first to bear that name, crown prince of the Aerendyl Imperium.

  He was a man of questions rather than commands, one who prized knowledge and discovery above the solemn weight of rulership itself. This habit, carried to excess, brought endless frustration to the Emperor, whose summons and decrees were so often answered with nothing but the hollow echo of his son's absence.

  Born into a station bound tight with duty and expectation, Draxion had made a quiet art of slipping away. He named these absences escapades, or adventures, if pressed to explain himself. Though he was neither a great warrior nor a master magus, he had inherited a pronounced atavism from the ancient blood of his imperial house. From that lineage of old, he drew a singular magis which he wielded with surprising ease, sometimes awkwardly and without grace, sometimes with a precision so keen it unsettled those who watched, leading some to whisper that he was a genius touched by fate.

  Resonance.

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  It was the gift of sensitivity to empathic bonds, a rare attunement of soul to soul. Through it, Draxion could shape his magis to forge links between spirits, to soothe and tame monsters and wild beasts, and to feel their emotions and their senses as though they were, for a fleeting time, his own.

  Because of this rare and perilous compatibility, he felt it.

  The monstrous existence descending from the heavens bore no malice. It didn't come as a conqueror or destroyer by intent. It simply was, and the disasters that followed were no more than the unintended wake of its arrival.

  More than that, it was wounded, and spent beyond any measure Draxion had ever known or imagined.

  The existence must have become aware of him, for Draxion felt a faint yet insistent empathic tug, drawing him toward the place where mountains shattered and valleys groaned beneath the weight of its coming. This summons was nothing like the grand callings of ancient tales. It held no majesty, no promise of exaltation or blessing.

  It was raw and instinctive.

  And in the restless depths of Draxion's curious heart, he felt that instinct answered in kind.

  So he set out at once, without pause or second thought. All sense of scale, of distance and enormity, slipped beyond his grasp, for his human senses couldn't reckon the true magnitude of the being he sought. He surrendered instead to the empathic pull, letting it guide his steps as he climbed perilous mountain paths and crossed valleys treacherous enough to break lesser men.

  In the strange state that took hold of him, sharpened and invigorated beyond reason, he scarcely noticed the passing of time. Each step carried him onward, while his mind reached and prodded at distant strands of consciousness far beyond his rightful domain, each attempt scraping painfully against limits he was never meant to test.

  Again and again, the flood of sensation threatened to undo him. Draxion was but a man, and he couldn't truly see the world through the senses of such an existence. The strain made his soul feel as though it were softening and running thin, his very sense of self pressed and stretched by sheer force.

  It was agony, near-unbearable, yet still he searched for more threads, more paths by which he might bind himself to the being. Some part of him understood, dimly but truly, that such a bond could never be whole, that he wasn't made to bear it, that his mortal flesh and spirit would shatter beneath the weight.

  Even so, in his fevered hunger to know, he didn't stop.

  At last the pressure proved too great. Draxion's knees gave way beneath him, and his back bowed as he collapsed against the unyielding ground. The veins within him strained as though they might burst, his skin darkening to a deep and livid crimson from the effort, his breath coming in broken gasps, his heart stumbling and losing its steady rhythm.

  Yet it had been enough.

  Draxion had seen.

  He pressed his forehead to the ground, or rather to the outer hide of the existence itself, to its vast and ancient scales. He let his resonance surge outward like a desperate signal, mana twisting and deforming the air around him as he drove his body and the power of his lineage to their utmost limit.

  The beacon of his soul shone like a bright and vivid yellow star, clear and fierce in the void. Around it loomed something immeasurably greater, a presence like a supermassive black hole, vast beyond comprehension. In that strange inner cosmos, the darkness gave forth a single, gentle flare, which crossed a distance no measure could name and came to rest upon Draxion's soul.

  Darkness followed.

  His consciousness was cast into it, not the darkness of blindness, but the deep and utter black of open space. Dimly, he could perceive faint points of light far away, distant stars scattered thinly across the void.

  And among them were regions of unnatural absence.

  There drifted a cloud of phase-aligned mass, moving in perfect unison without individuality or will of its own. It was bound by no morality and restrained by no mercy. Wherever it passed, it erased all things it touched, carrying out an endless duty of correction. Its numbers were so vast that they could have shrouded the cosmos itself.

  Loss and exhaustion pressed upon him, along with a raw and instinctive will to survive.

  These feelings didn't belong to the cloud of destruction.

  They came from the being to which he was bound.

  It had fled, driven by necessity, knowing all the while that such flight could only delay an inevitable confrontation.

  Draxion was hurled back into his body, into the waking world, every limb aflame with fever and pain. Blood ran freely from his nose, his ears, and his lips, yet in his shattered state he spared no thought for his own ruin.

  His mind reeled, reshaped and scarred by what he had witnessed.

  Once more, the existence brushed against his soul, more gently now, careful and deliberate, as though wary of breaking it into countless fragments. Draxion felt its weariness, its deep need for rest and sustenance if it were to mend what had been broken.

  There was within it a will to endure, a sober recognition of necessity, and the forming of an accord, to protect and to be protected in turn.

  It was asking him.

  With great effort, he forced his trembling soul to answer, letting it pulse outward in reply. Within that response lay an aspiration, fragile yet resolute, to stand together, however impossible such a stand might be.

  On that day, Draxion reshaped the tale of his bloodline and of his civilisation, setting its course for ages yet to come.