The Five Realms

Prologue

A soft thrum echoed through the canyon's bones.

In the hour before dawn, the air trembled. Fog clung low to the ground, silvering the rocks like breath held too long. Something ancient stirred beneath the earth, not with fury—but with memory.

Three moons bled into alignment overhead.

On the cliff's edge, a figure stood cloaked in dusk-blue, arms crossed behind his back. Wind teased the hem of his robe, and the constellation stitched into his collar shimmered like a pulse. The man's eyes reflected starlight—not metaphorically, but literally.

He waited.

In the distance, five points of light blinked into being. One by one. One for each realm.

"They're waking," he murmured, voice coarse with time. "Faster than they should."

Behind him, a second figure stepped from the shadows. Her hair shimmered like sanded onyx, and her voice was a song half-remembered. "The Vices will feel it. They'll send agents."

The man didn't turn. "They already have."

From beneath the cliff, the sound came again—a low, humming call. Not song. Not language. A resonance older than either.

The woman's eyes flared. "One of the dragons?"

"No," said the man. "Not yet. But the seals are thinning."

He lifted a hand. Between his fingers, the air thickened, flickered, and bent into shape—a floating circle of mirrored script, rotating like a clock's heart.

Five names etched themselves across its surface.

"They don't know what they are," the woman said.

"They will."

"And the price?"

The man closed his eyes. For a moment, he looked tired, not ancient. "Everything

—------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The forest held its breath.

The trees towered like ancient jurors, their bare limbs clawing at the man's cloak as he ran. Blood poured from the gash at his side, hot and rhythmic, soaking through his tunic in a steady beat that felt too fast. Too final.

In his arms, two infants whimpered against the cold. Pale wool was wrapped tightly around their tiny forms. Their cries were small, broken, like birdcalls lost in a storm.

Each sound pierced the silence like a flare.

"Just a little further," the man rasped, his voice raw. "Stay with me."

Behind him, something moved—no footsteps, only the impression of movement. A flicker in the corner of the eye. A whisper that trailed rot and ash.

Isendorn didn't look back. He couldn't.

A sudden clearing opened before him like a wound in the woods. Nestled at its heart: a weather-worn stone house, slumped under moonlight. Its shape shimmered slightly, as if half out of phase with the world. The barest shimmer of a ward-line pulsed at its threshold, visible only when the wind passed through just right.

Isendorn surged forward, breath ragged, clutching the twins tight.

"Skoliro nosu un breoal Thornessa fra Galbatorix!"
Protect us and this house from Galbatorix.

The front door blew open with a sound like a sucked breath. A warm amber pulse rippled from the threshold as he crossed, spreading like veins across the stone floor and low ceiling. The wardstone hummed. Magic answered.