The stars were bleeding.
All across the sky, cracks opened in the firmament like wounds torn through parchment. Reality buckled under a cosmic force that defied all comprehension.
Arin Thale stood atop the fractured spire of the Spiral Tower, surrounded by smoke, flame, and screams carried by the wind. His robes were torn. His grimoire burned in his hands. His veins, once overflowing with power, were dry rivers now.
The Outer Gods had come.
Not myths. Not prophecy. Not warnings etched in forgotten tomes.
They were here. They had crossed the rift.
And they wanted one thing—the Codex Primordial, the ultimate source of arcane truth. Not to claim it. Not to use it.
To destroy it.
Because the Codex, in all its unfathomable knowledge, was the one thing they could never bend, never corrupt, never unwrite.
Arin had been its Chosen—not by birthright, but by brilliance. A scholar, a strategist, the only mortal to ever synchronize with its infinite pages.
And now, as reality crumbled around him, he knew this was the end.
They had betrayed him. The Archmagi. The Council. The heroes.
Everyone.
So this is how knowledge dies. Forgotten, alone.
But just before the final blow struck—when the veil was about to close forever—a ripple surged through time itself.
The Codex, defiant even in death, used the last of its godlike will to cast Arin beyond fate.
To a new world.
A new body.
A chance to begin again.
Unaware. Forgotten.
But not broken.