The Seven Paladins - PROLOGUE

The universe was changing.

The sky had lost its pigment, the stars their shine, the sun it’s effervescent glow. Darkness had cast its shadow over the world like a steel wool blanket, scratching at all that it aimed to protect. The Council was forced to call upon their ancestors, the chosen ones who were destined to cast the darkness out and begin a new world, one that no one had ever prepared for. Although the Council had predicted that the world would survive much longer without their interference, they were forced to take precautionary actions, as the world was headed towards its demise much faster than one would hope. The humans had destroyed it, practically devouring it with their avaricious hands, blood of their brothers dripping from their ignorant crimson fingertips.

Consumed by war and destruction, the world was coming to a bitter end. Infectious chemicals soaked the air until it was too heavy to breathe, causing new fatal illnesses to latch on to whatever living things reachable. The human population had decreased to a mere #####, forcing many struggling families into famine and financial losses. Many necessary members of the work force became ill, eventually passing, leaving more and more empty slots in crucial societal branches.

Many attempted to continue on living their everyday lives; some succeeded, but many eventually fell. Several decades passed, and the leaders of each country joined forces to form an alliance to bring their precious earth back into the light where it once was. Weapons of destruction were permanently banned in an effort to promote world peace, something that the world had been striving for since the beginning of time. For years, the allies lived in peace; the world was reconstructed, the air cleansed, but it was never the same as it once was. Many still struggled, and infectious diseases still lurked in every corner.

However, no one but the Council knew that it wasn’t just the humans’ ignorant mortal ways that had caused this near-apocalypse; no, it was much larger than that.

A man known only in legend but never seen by a knowing eye, a man who was consumed with power and rage and corruption, a man who would travel to the ends of the world and back, sacrificing everything only to obtain ultimate, unlimited power. Adhikar. Adhikar possessed powers not natural to the mortals’ world, powers that were given to him by an unknown source. Born human, he slaughtered his family along with the town in which he resided in an unmistakably furious effort to obtain power and respect. His powers were never traced back to their origin, but they were far greater than any mortal’s strengths. He was convinced of death’s rewards, of destruction’s rebirth, and of earth’s longing for subjugation.

The time had finally come for the Council to act. The allies’ peace treaty had been interrupted and the life of the world was at stake. It was time for war. A war unlike any other.