Here, Historian Palimpsest has originally left a note on the bottom of his pages, most likely later to be injected somewhere in the text, though where it originally would have been placed is debated, and now, it is left here.
Author's Interjection:
Some have tried, and still try, to paint this time as the world's great moment of cooperation.
A glorious union of fractured peoples standing shoulder to shoulder against a single, monstrous enemy.
A tale to teach children, a fable to soothe the hearts of kings. A triumph of light.
They are wrong.
This was no union. It was an alliance forged in fear and tempered by pride.
The world followed the Kalandir not because of some noble calling, but because they feared the Irath more than they hated one another.
Yes, the banners rose across the continents. The horns were sounded in half a hundred tongues.
But the unity was an illusion.
And the victory was still far, far away.
The war had only begun.
The end of the Eighth Age was still just a shadow on the horizon, but it was already growing.
Entry 285 – False Victories
In the early months of the campaign, hope reigned.
Maps were drawn. Enemy routes and tactics projected. Victories anticipated.
All across the known world, the story was the same: the Irath would be surrounded, driven inward, and crushed beneath the combined force of civilization itself.
And for a time, it seemed to work.
Morale soared.
But war, as always, is not a straight path.
The Irath were not fools. They were not weak. And above all, they were not conventional.
Their corruption ran deeper than most imagined.
There were no cities to be captured. No strongholds to hold. No people.
They left behind nothing worth conquering.
The allied armies, hundreds of thousands strong, found themselves marching into empty lands.
No crops. No rivers untainted. No signs of life.
And then came the traps.
Some were magical, some designed for death, and some to fracture thought and memory. Commanders forgot their own names. Scouts lost days at a time in fog-choked ravines that hadn't been there before.
Others were simpler: poisoned water, difficult terrain, collapsing bridges.
Soldiers began turning on each other in the night, accusing their closest comrades of false names and false identities.
Madness spread like a sickness, but with no symptoms until the blade was already drawn.
Entire units simply vanished.
The tents were there in the morning.
At first, it was blamed on deserters. Then spies. Then incompetence.
But soon, there were no excuses left.
And then came the storms.
They were not natural. No lightning, no winds.
Just slow-moving black clouds, bloated and rumbling with something deeper than thunder.
Witnesses - few and unreliable - claimed one battalion stood their ground when the clouds came. They lit every torch. Warded every tent. Buried themselves in magic and prayer.
None survived.
The Kalandir pressed on, and all generals dismissed the warnings.
What else could they do?