The Warning That Changed Everything
Received in Harmony Cycle 960
Witnessed by the Council of Master Seers
Recorded by Scribe Valerian the Chronicler
The Vision Descends
On the fifteenth day of the Autumn Convergence, as spiritual energy continued its inexplicable decline, Kaelen the Truthweaver fell into the deepest trance any had witnessed. His body became rigid as stone while his eyes blazed with silver fire. For three days and nights he remained thus, neither eating nor drinking, while power gathered around him like a storm.
When the vision reached its peak, he spoke with a voice that seemed to echo from the very foundations of the world:
"I see the end of all things as we know them,
The great tapestry of existence torn beyond repair,
What was built in harmony shall be devoured by chaos,
And the immortal path shall close forever.
Behold! The spiritual wells do not merely decline—
They shall run completely dry within a generation,
We who thought ourselves eternal shall become mortal,
And mortality itself shall become a forgotten blessing.
The War of Unraveling approaches its final phase,
Where brother devours brother's very essence,
The great formations shall not merely crack—they shall explode,
Taking with them every living thing within a thousand leagues.
I see cities of ten million souls reduced to ash,
Continents cracking like broken pottery,
The very elements turning against each other
Until fire burns water and earth consumes the sky.
The cultivation sects shall turn to cannibalism of spirit,
Devouring each other's cores in desperate hunger,
Until the last surviving master sits alone
Atop a mountain of his former brothers' bones.
Techniques perfected over ten thousand years
Shall be lost in a single day of madness,
Libraries containing the wisdom of ages
Shall burn while their guardians feast on each other.
The immortal path—our greatest achievement—
Shall become a road leading only to oblivion,
For in our pride we have made it dependent
Upon the very source we are destroying.
Yet... yet... in the deepest darkness I see...
A thread so thin it might be imagined...
If the greatest houses could cease their warfare,
If the wisest could accept complete sacrifice...
There exists a path—narrow as a blade's edge—
Where knowledge might survive total annihilation,
Where what was built could wait in hidden chambers
Until... until... the conditions change.
But the price! The price burns my mind to see!
Nothing shall remain in the world above,
All must be abandoned to preserve any,
And even then, success is but a whisper.
This I see with certainty beyond doubt:
Without this path, there shall be only void,
No records shall remain of our existence,
No hope for any future to build upon.
The choice before us is not life or death—
It is complete extinction or the slimmest hope
That someday, in an age we cannot imagine,
What we preserve might seed a new beginning.
Choose quickly, for the window narrows
With each day that passes in warfare,
Soon even the path of preservation
Shall be closed by our own destruction.
This is my burden, this is my warning:
Total annihilation or desperate preservation—
There is no middle path, no partial salvation,
Only ending or the gamble of hidden continuance."
With these final words, Kaelen collapsed and did not wake for seven days. When consciousness returned, his hair had turned white, and his eyes bore the weight of absolute knowledge. He spoke little after this, spending his remaining years in fevered preparation, knowing that every day of delay made the narrow path of survival even narrower.