THE ASH ALLIANCE

The air in the Great Concord Hall of Aethelgard was colder than ice. The seventeen leaders of the Altverse regions stared at each other across the huge round table, their faces masks of pride and distrust. Lord Vorlag's emergency summons of the Grey Dawn Clan had been met with skepticism, and now, his words about a threat called "the Void" fell on deaf ears.

— These are simple misreporting, Vorlag — said an elven queen disdainfully. Alarmism to justify the centralization of power.

— My armies will not be moved by phantoms and assumptions — growled a dwarf general, his beard braided with mithril rings. We have more real disputes on our own borders.

Vorlag listened, his face weary but patient. When the bickering subsided, he stood up. He did not shout. His voice, calm, filled the room.

— You talk as if history has nothing to teach us. We all know the story. The official story that is taught to every new adventurer. — He began to walk around the table, his gaze sweeping over each of the leaders. — We all learned about the "Age of Calamity," a dark time at the dawn of the Altverse where the world was unstable. We learned about the "Great Fragmentation," when entire regions became inaccessible and creatures went mad. And we learned about the "First Pioneers," the legendary heroes who fought those creatures that stabilized the regions and, through their efforts, gave us the peaceful world we know today. —
Several leaders nodded. It was the story they all knew. The founding myth of their world.

— A nice story, isn't it? — said Vorlag, pausing. His tone changed, losing all its warmth, becoming hard as steel. — Well, that story we all learned... it's a lie. —

A hush of shock swept through the room. — A white lie, created by the first stewards to prevent universal panic. A truth that my lineage, the lineage of the Grey Dawn, has been sworn to protect and pass on in secret for generations, hoping that this day would never come. —

He leaned over the table, his gaze burning. — There was no "Great Fragmentation". There was a war. A war we lost. There was an enemy. A conscious enemy, an intelligence of pure darkness called the Void, that did not conquer, but erased. It wasn't bugs, it was an existential plague that consumed the code, lands and souls of players, permanently wiping them out of existence. They called it the "War of Silence", because its victims did not even leave an echo. —

Horror began to show on the faces of the leaders. — The "First Pioneers" were warriors. They fought and died by the dozen. And in the end, finding themselves outmatched, they made a final sacrifice. They pooled their power, their lives, to forge a Great Seal. The "sky" you see every day is not real. It is the barrier! The cage that has kept the Void at bay for millennia! —
He pointed to the room. — What happened in the Pit! The death of elite players like Saitras, not only leave no bodies, they are sometimes consumed and reappeared as puppets of the void! The corruption of the land and the beasts! They are not "anomalies"! They are the first tremors of the prison that breaks! It is the enemy himself, who has awakened and is hungry! —

He stood upright, his voice now a roar of desperation and defiance. — So keep arguing about your borders and your titles. None of that will matter when the Void comes to erase your names from existence! I ask you! Will you die as lone kings on thrones of ashes, or will you fight as united players for the only flag that matters: that of survival? PRAISE YOUR HEARTS FOR THE FUTURE OF THIS WORLD! —

The western general, the most skeptical, stood up slowly, his face pale. He drew his sword and thrust it into the table. — To survival — he growled.

One by one, the others followed. Hope, born of the terror of the truth, had finally united them.

Lord Vorlag raised his own sword, tears streaming down his face.

—Today, the seventeen regions of the Altverse... declare war on the Void! — 

The shout of triumph was drowned out by a deafening roar from above. The great hall's ceiling shattered. Panic erupted as a monstrous head, the skull of a Primordial Dragon reanimated with purple runes, burst through the rubble. A colossal puppet.

The bone dragon's head ignored all others. Its jaw descended with lightning speed. There was no battle. Lord Vorlag, the architect of hope, only had time to look up in horror before he was devoured whole by the giant puppet. The sound of his armor shattering was the last heard of him.

The chaos was absolute. Out of the shadows emerged Morwen, the Puppet Master, with a satisfied smile as the rest of the dragon's body broke through the walls. The panicked leaders fled. In the midst of the massacre, the young squire Leo did not run. He threw himself against Morwen to give the others time. The fight was short and brutal, ending with Leo on the ground, missing an arm.

Morwen, annoyed by the wound the boy had inflicted on him, looked at the terrified survivors. — Go. Run. Tell your regions that your alliance was born and died on the same day. The age of the players is over. The age of the Void has begun. —

Morwen and his dragon vanished, leaving behind a ruined hall, a crippled young hero, and a declaration of war that had been answered with the most brutal and public execution imaginable.