The world of Aethera had always lived beneath three silent moons.
For a thousand years they circled the sky in slow and distant harmony, watching over kingdoms, forests, oceans, and forgotten ruins where ancient things slept beneath stone.
Most people believed the moons were nothing more than celestial lights.
But the oldest records told another story.
Long before the first kingdoms rose, before men built cities of stone, the world had been torn apart by a war that nearly destroyed creation itself.
It was a war between the First Light and the creatures born from the Deep Darkness.
Twenty-one demons had crawled out from the abyss beneath the world.
Each one carried a fragment of the darkness that existed before the stars.
They were not merely beasts.
They were ancient powers capable of corrupting land, bending minds, and swallowing entire civilizations.
The war that followed was known in the oldest texts as The War of Creation.
In that age the divine powers of the world forged thirteen sacred artifacts.
Each artifact was given to warriors chosen from among the early races of Aethera.
Those warriors would later be remembered as the First Knights.
With the power of the thirteen artifacts, the knights fought the demons across continents and seas.
Mountains were shattered during those battles.
Oceans boiled.
Entire forests turned to ash.
Yet one by one the demons were defeated.
But they could not be destroyed.
Instead they were sealed beneath the earth, hidden inside forgotten prisons scattered across the world.
The artifacts that sealed them were lost soon after the war ended.
Some were buried with their wielders.
Some vanished into the oceans.
Others were locked away by kings who feared their power.
As centuries passed, the story slowly faded into legend.
Kingdoms rose and fell.
Empires burned and were forgotten.
The sacred artifacts became myths told by traveling storytellers beside village fires.
Few believed they had ever existed.
Yet the sky still carried the same three moons that watched the ancient war.
The Pale Moon.
The Blue Moon.
And the Red Moon.
According to prophecy written in a language older than any kingdom, a terrible omen would come when the three moons aligned in the same night sky.
When that moment arrived, the ancient seals would begin to weaken.
And the twenty-one demons buried beneath the world would awaken once again.
For a thousand years that prophecy had remained silent.
Until the night when the Pale Moon rose above the northern mountains of Aethera.
On that night a lone traveler walked along a frozen road near the forgotten forests of Velkar.
His cloak was worn by long journeys and winter winds.
A sword rested across his back, wrapped carefully in dark cloth.
The man's name was Caelan.
He had traveled alone for many weeks, following a path he did not fully understand.
Strange dreams had haunted his sleep since the day he left the ruined monastery where his life had changed forever.
In those dreams he saw three moons burning above a black sky.
He heard distant voices whispering ancient words he could not understand.
And always, in the center of those visions, he saw a sword glowing with pale blue light.
The same sword he carried now.
The wind moved through the dark pine forest as Caelan reached a ridge overlooking a small valley.
Below him stood a quiet village surrounded by wooden fences and thin trails of smoke rising from chimneys.
A wooden sign near the road marked the name of the settlement.
Ravenholt.
A place so small it rarely appeared on maps.
Yet as Caelan stepped forward toward the village, something strange happened above the world.
Far beyond the clouds, the slow movement of the heavens began to change.
The Pale Moon continued its silent path across the sky.
But deep behind the horizon, the Blue Moon had already begun to rise.
And somewhere beyond the edge of the world, the Red Moon waited for its time to appear.
The alignment had begun.
No king knew it.
No army saw it.
But beneath the mountains of Aethera, in a cavern buried deeper than any human had ever walked, something ancient slowly opened its eyes.