'When the moons allign for the 11th time,

When long Winter comes and the lights combine,

An ancient malice will be re-woken,

Always known but never spoken,

The war that banished the sleeping power,

Will come again,

In the Final Hour'

Long had this passage been etched into the arch above the entrance to the Great Temple, and long had it been disregarded. But now, as the monks slept within the temple walls, a lone man stood outside the gates, worry etched across his face. He carried a book which he had laid out on the floor, opened to a page containing the same passage. Below the writing was an illustration, three moons arranged in a triangle against a starless sky, below them a dark figure loomed over a burning city, surrounded by unrecognisable runes in blue and red.

The man was a Spellcaster, one of the oldest, a survivor of the Great War, who had been in hiding for 100 years in the Forest of Deepreach. Spellcasters were not Wizards or Witches, though those did exist, they were higher beings, imbued with the power of the Gods, placed on Earth to watch over the Ancient Magic enclosed in the Monuments of the Gods around the World. It was this power that began the War. The people grew afraid of the forces these Demi-Gods represented and so shunned them. The Spellcasters refused to leave, knowing that to abandon their posts was to abandon those they were posted to protect. They stayed, continuing to protect the very people who were soon to turn on them, and begin the War.