(More than one-thousand years before present day)

  The Council of Nine met in secret for forty days. The air in the mountain chamber grew heavy, smelling of ink-blotted parchment and the stifling soot cast by a thousand oil lamps and flaring torches. They sought a solution to the madness spreading through Tenroha, a rot that moved faster than the wind.

  King Ryan II and Queen Evangeline spoke for the humans, their faces etched with the exhaustion of a race that feels time slipping away. King Ragnar and Queen Sapphire represented the dwarves, their heavy fur cloaks dusted with the granite grit of the deep mines. The elves, who reject hierarchies, sent their two wisest elders: Viskwyn, the "Wise One," and Viskarn, the "Wise Eagle," whose eyes seemed to track shadows only he could see.

  The Tribune of Magi, an ancient order of wizards, oracles, and magicians, called the meeting to order. They sent Arryn of Night and Light, a Grand Master who wore a faded homespun robe looking more like a weather-beaten wanderer than a master of the arcane. Beside him stood Melyshada, an oracle born of elf and dwarf blood.

  Ethelinda, the largest member, sat among them. Her emerald scales caught the flickering torchlight like polished gemstones. She represented her mate, Dracus, the Dragon King. From the peaks, the enormous red dragon looked like a vein of uncooled lava pulsing against the mountainside.

  The council gathered atop the Attikì Mountains. This range acted as the world’s spine, separating the western coast from the vast eastern heartland. It stretched across the continent, from the bone-chilling waters of the Ocean of Sorrows in the north to the sulfurous volcanic archipelago of the south. This island chain was home to the dragons and the suffocating heat of the obsidian-scarred volcano, Eldfjall.

  Trouble brewed in the west. A wizard named Jemot, once a brother of the Magi, had unraveled ancient taboo arts, unleashing the forbidden arcana. The Tribune had stripped him of his rank, exiling him to the Isle of Time, for his atrocities: the most heinous of which was necromancy. There, among ruins that predated any known language, Jemot mastered a powerful, primordial magic that echoed with the frantic pulse of a fever and the sharp, metallic tang of a cauterized wound.

  He returned to Tenroha riding the crest of a giant tidal wave, his crimson cloak snapping in the brine-heavy wind. The surge leveled the city of Acenes in a deafening roar of splintering wood and screams. There were no survivors.

  Jemot had left as an aging man of fifty. He returned younger, his jet-black hair shining with a predatory vitality. With this newfound power, he was aging in reverse, his strength growing as his years retreated. He immediately began weaving an army of the undead, their hollow eyes glowing with a borrowed, sickly light. When the effort taxed his abilities, he turned to the living, enslaving their minds until they moved like puppets dangling on unseen threads. In six moon cycles, he was within striking distance of the Attikì Mountains.

  “We have sat here for a moon’s time!” King Ragnar shouted, his fist hitting the table with a thud that rattled the inkwells. “We squabble while this villain carves his mark into my borders. In a fortnight, he will be at our doorsteps.”

  Viskwyn gestured with a graceful, dismissive hand. “He threatens your doorstep, King Ragnar, not ours.”

  “Dear brother,” Viskarn interjected, his voice like dry leaves. “If the mountains fall, Jemot marches on the human capital and then our sacred groves. He will consume the world before the next full moon.”

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  King Ryan II nodded, his hand tightening on his sword hilt. “The Queen and I agree. We must act.”

  “But we lack a plan,” Queen Evangeline added, her voice trembling. “Without a course of action, our unity is just a circle of victims.”

  “SILENCE, YOU SQUABBLING PISSANTS,” Ethelinda whispered. Her massive lungs turned the whisper into a thunderclap that rattled their cups. “I HAVE LISTENED TO YOUR WHIMPERING FOR TOO LONG. MY KINDRED COULD TEAR THAT WORM-EATER FROM HIS MOUNT IN MINUTES.”

  “And would you leave unscathed?” Queen Sapphire asked, her eyes narrowing.

  Viskarn leaned forward with an all-knowing smirk. “Precisely why I didn't mention it.” He leaned back in his seat and laced his fingers. “But the Lady is right; if Jemot fells even one dragon, he gains a god for his army. He would bend our entire world to his will, and then the sky itself would turn against us.”

  “THEN, WISE ONE,” sarcasm oozing off her words, “WHAT DO YOU SUGGEST?” Ethelinda asked, the air around her shimmering with heat.

  He stood and paced around with his hands laced behind as if he were lost deep in thought, silence filled in around him. “My people prepare to leave Tenroha,” Viskwyn said after a pause lasting one hundred heartbeats, his voice cold. “Strange forces call us to lands unknown. Lands that may lay many weeks to the east, past the Ocean of Sorrows. We will embark soon. This is your war, not ours.” He returned to his seat and crossed his leg as he leaned back, wearing an expression of practiced, heavy-lidded indifference that made it clear that this was no longer his concern.

  “COWARDS!” Ragnar stood shouting and slammed his fists down harder on the massive table, knocking over the inkwells and goblets. Turning his back in a jagged sign of disrespect. “You are worse than cowards.” He huffed, “You run like whipped dogs while your home burns,” his voice rising with his anger until it echoed all around.

  “We do not enjoy fighting, but we are not cowards,” Viskwyn replied, a smug arrogance spilling out of his mouth. “This situation merely hastens a journey five years in the making. However, some do wish to stay. We may have room for a select few to join the exodus.”

  The room fell silent, the only sound the crackle of the hearth and the heavy breathing of the Dragon Queen. Queen Evangeline finally broke the quiet with a question they all were pondering. “How many can be saved?”

  “One hundred dwarves, and one hundred men,” Viskwyn said. “The dragons must fly the distance alone.”

  Suddenly, Melyshada’s eyes rolled back, revealing nothing but sightless white. Her body tensed, and a smell like scorched earth filled the chamber as she began to chant in a voice that wasn't her own:

  “Mountains rise, evil slows.

  The man from Time, power grows.

  Ages pass, a child is born,

  Freedom alas, from evil’s scorn.

  Friends of Light, heed the call.

  Nine young souls arrange the fall.

  Time grows short. Unite the lost.

  Without support, he’ll pay the cost.”

  The vibration of her words stayed in the air long after she stopped.

  “There is a way,” Arryn said, his eyes bright with a desperate, terrifying light. “The Magi know a ritual to make the mountains rise. It requires a high price, but it will take every one of us.”

  The council moved with frantic purpose. Within a fortnight, every dragon, elf, and magic-user gathered along the jagged spine of the Attikì Mountains.

  Arryn began the chant. The sound rippled north and south, a low hum that grew into a rhythmic roar as each member placed atop a peak took up the chant. The ground didn't just shake; it groaned with the agony of ten thousand ground-quakes. The ritual acted as a catalyst, pulling every ounce of magic before draining the very life force from the practitioners.

  With a crack like a thousand lightning strikes, the mountains tore from their roots. They surged toward the clouds, grinding and screaming as they rose higher and higher, piercing the very heavens to create an impassable wall of sleek stone.

  The cost was a slaughter. As the peaks reached the pinnacle of height, hundreds of mages collapsed, their skin turning translucent and brittle as the spell drained them of their essence. They became hollow husks, scattered like dead leaves upon the wind. High above, several dragons let out final, haunting roars before their hearts stopped mid-beat, their massive forms plummeting to the ground below.

  By the time the mountains stood still, a silent graveyard stretched across the jagged summits. The act had begun with thousands; only hundreds remained to limp home from whence they came. They left behind a wall of stone and a world divided, the ultimate sacrifice to hold back the dark tide of evil that was approaching.