Prologue: The Shard of Memory

The rain hammered against the windows of the small, dimly lit library, its rhythm an almost hypnotic backdrop to the silence within. Elliot Webb, a history professor with a penchant for obscure civilizations, sat hunched over an old oak desk cluttered with dust-ridden books and faded manuscripts. The flickering candle beside him cast long shadows across the worn leather covers, but it wasn't the dim light or the oppressive storm outside that kept his attention fixed to the pages before him. It was the relic.

A shard of glass, no larger than the palm of his hand, lay at the center of the desk. Its surface was smooth, but the edges were jagged, as though it had been torn from something far greater. There were no markings, no obvious clue to its origin, but the moment Elliot's fingers brushed against it, he felt something—an odd tingling sensation that ran up his spine, like an electric current spreading through his veins.

A faint whispering began in his ears, soft at first, but growing louder with each passing second. The language was unfamiliar, its cadence alien, but it was unmistakably speaking to him. Desperately, he pulled his hand away, but the shard seemed to pulse with a strange energy, a warmth that urged him to reach for it once more.

"Just a moment longer," Elliot muttered to himself, his voice barely audible above the storm. His curiosity was a force he couldn't resist. He had spent his entire life searching for something extraordinary—something beyond the dry, lifeless history lessons—and now, it seemed, he had found it.

Before he could touch it again, the shard shifted. The world around him bent, the walls of the library twisting and contorting like liquid, the floor beneath his feet buckling in impossible angles. A flash of blinding light surged from the shard, and Elliot felt his body being pulled—no, dragged—through time and space. His vision blurred, his mind screaming for him to hold on to something, anything.

Then, all at once, everything stopped.

Elliot stumbled forward, catching himself on the edge of a jagged rock. His heart pounded in his chest as he looked around, trying to make sense of what had just happened. The library was gone. The storm was gone. In its place, a vast, desolate landscape stretched out before him—broken, fractured, as if the very earth itself had been split apart and left to decay.

It was like nothing he had ever seen before.

The sky above was an unnatural swirl of colors, flickering in and out of existence. The ground was cracked and crumbling, but in the distance, Elliot could make out what appeared to be ruins—towers of ancient stone, their tops lost in clouds that seemed to pulse with energy. The air smelled faintly of ozone, and the distant rumblings of thunder seemed to reverberate through the land like a distant heartbeat.

A voice echoed in his mind, low and cryptic: Welcome, Keybearer.

Elliot's breath caught in his throat. "Keybearer?" he whispered, his voice trembling.

The world around him remained silent, offering no answer. But the whispering had stopped.

The shard. He still held it in his hand. It was warm to the touch, its surface now faintly glowing with a soft light.

A sudden realization struck him: he wasn't in his world anymore.

What is this place? he thought, as the wind picked up, howling like a dying beast. He looked around once more, the realization settling in with a creeping sense of dread.

This was no ordinary world. And he had no idea how to leave it.