Every city has a pulse, but
Londinium is different. Once called the city of gates by ancient mystics and
scholars, it was then a bastion of higher thought. It has since had many other names.
Navah'tri, Nadi Pavaka, Ayin Shalem. But that was before the shadows came, and
a dark empire used blackest magics and occulted technologies to rework the
shining histories of an entire realm. Turning the sacred dreaming of all souls into a hideous, brutal nightmare. The seething hush. The folding city.
The manipulation of temporality itself.
I felt the signal shifting even
before the chronologies began to change. Those healing temples and places of
power, remade as dark icons in the skin of the city. The strange classicism of
Wren, the austere baroque of Hawksmoor. But even amidst such devastation, the
old guard remained. What was left of the wisdom councils. The healers, seers
and benevolent sorcerers. The knights errant, still bound to the true chivalric
code. Men see such tales as nothing more than fictions now. Swords, stones, and
kings who never were. But I've seen first-hand how storytellers once
safeguarded both causality and intellectual legacy, until these dark angels
turned our tales stygian black.
Who am I to speak on such things? I
am Ka'shayel. Nothing and no one. Fallen lord of dreams. Lost keeper of time.
But I speak truth to you now. It is that same holy fire which dwells in man,
the fulcrum of eternity. The infinite power of storytelling and myth to reshape
mind, body and soul. And no false throne, no pretender chronology, can dim its
light or cool its heat. So, hear me now. And listen. There still are angels,
true angels of kindness and creative light, upon Londinium's gates. Here we
shall remain, steadfast, until the beginning of the world.
