The answer did not come from the palace, but from a damp, low-ceilinged tavern nestled in the rocky crags just inside the Alced border. The sign outside groaned in the biting wind, a faded painting of a broken anvil.Inside, the air smelled of sour ale, wet wool, and cheap tobacco. In the furthest corner, away from the roaring hearth, a man sat alone, nursing a wooden flagon. He wore the standard leather jerkin of a local merchant, but his eyes were too sharp, his posture too rigid. He was an informant, a traitor to the crown of Alced, waiting for a contact he had been promised would change his fortunes forever.The tavern door swung open. The wind howled into the room, threatening to blow out the candles, but as a tall figure stepped inside, the flames didn't flicker—they froze. The ambient heat of the tavern plummeted, a sudden, unnatural frost creeping across the floorboards.The traveler walked with a slow, deliberate cadence, his gnarled wooden staff tapping against the wood. He didn't look at the patrons who shivered instinctively as he passed. He walked straight to the back corner and sat across from the informant."You're late," the informant muttered, his voice trembling despite his best efforts to sound tough. "And you brought the cold with you.""Time is a human construct," the traveler replied, his voice incredibly smooth, completely devoid of inflection. "And the cold is merely the absence of life. Tell me what I paid you to discover."The informant swallowed hard, reaching into his vest to pull out a rolled piece of parchment—a stolen map of the Temple of Time's lower aqueducts and hidden entry points. "The boy king awoke a week ago. They call him Chris, but the inner circle whispers the name Astana. Marcell has brought in the High Oracles. The palace is locked down tighter than a vault."The traveler reached out a pale, unmarked hand and took the parchment. As his fingers touched the ink, a dark, oily vapor briefly stained the edges before soaking into the fibers."Astana," the traveler murmured, a faint, twisted smile touching his lips. "The cosmic counterweight. The great nothing. The master will be pleased to know the prophecy is precise.""Look, I did my part," the informant hissed, leaning forward. "Now give me the rest of the gold. I need to get my family out of the province before whatever you're planning starts."The traveler looked up. For a fraction of a second, the illusion of his human face rippled, revealing a hollow, swallowing blackness beneath his eyes—a void of absolute negation."Gold is for the living," the traveler whispered. "But you have served the Vanguard of Old. Your master is Valakor, the Undying Lord of the Ashen Realm. And I am merely his breath."Before the informant could draw his breath to scream, the traveler gently tapped the wooden table with his index finger. The dark vapor surged across the wood, wrapping around the informant's legs and crawling up his chest. The man didn't make a sound; his flesh hardened, turned grey, and crumbled into fine, dark ash right into his chair, leaving nothing behind but his empty leather vest.The traveler stood up, retrieving his staff. The tavern around him remained completely silent, the other patrons frozen in a state of catatonic terror, unable to process what their eyes had just seen.The traveler stepped back out into the biting wind, looking toward the distant plateau where the Temple of Time pierced the sky. The first herald of Valakor had arrived, and his name was Malakai.