The World Was Once Dark...
Dark as though a giant’s ink plot had fallen over and spilled onto the map of all there was, drowning the inhabitants in murkiness. Dark as though the sun that burned so hot and so high in the sky was snuffed out like little more than a candle. Dark as though evil seeped from the ground to spread it’s pestilence throughout the world known as Ethoas.
So dark that even hope’s flame could not escape the engulfing dusk.
We know that for many years those that called Ethoas home lived in fear of this. That their lives were in fact not lives at all, but hollow shells that did little more than survive. Words like hope and joy were so long unused, that they soon became forgotten entirely.
This darkness goes without name, escaping the history books completely. The misery it wrought, and the fear it instilled, are all that trickle down to those now living in the light. They are stories from ancestors so distant most do not even believe such a darkness once existed.
Once dominated.
But it did.
What little is known tells us that one day, thousands of moons ago, something changed. Something… started.
The sun’s flame that had been snuffed so absolutely relit to dry the fallen ink. That light, from somewhere, returned to the hearts of Ethoas.
And the luminescent brightness shone the way for those reintroduced with hope. It revealed that something could be done. That there was a fight left to be had.
And so ensued the Purge. A war so treacherous none like it had been seen before, and none like it since. Those with the renewed flame in their heart rallied against those that stayed in the shadows. Many died, though the precise numbers are also lost among the rest.
The result was not.
Light triumphed.
The sun no longer hid behind the dull clouds of oppression. The ink that for so long blotted the land withdrew until it disappeared entirely. The darkness was defeated, and pushed back to where it had sulked from.
Life returned to those of Ethoas, and with it all the joys and wonders that so rightfully accompany. For so long since those dark days the world has basked under the sun. So long that perhaps too many now think those days belong in storybooks alone.
Though a few sense something is again changing.
A few sense in their hearts the ink as it straddles distant borders of light and dark.
The murkiness is there.
And though they wait, readying themselves, they fear what is to come.
Darkness paces the shadows once again.
And with it, comes war.