Kezran dwelled in the shadows; the flickering light from his oil lantern sent his eerie silhouette gyrating across the chipped, mossy stones behind him. The ruins of a crumbled ancient society loomed in the distance as he walked along the pathways beneath the pine trees. How long he had waited—six thousand years of scheming, six thousand years of gathering the pieces for his chessboard. Finally, his players were now ready. Fate would bring them together, and they'd play right into his ploy. He felt tremors of excitement just imagining it.

In the peaceful realm of Alatheia, where darkness held sway and whispers of ancient evils haunted the land, he stood alone, a sinister spectre amidst the fading light. His hands, imbued with the chill of the abyss, hovered over the cursed terrain, trembling with malevolence and despair.

With a grin as twisted as the roots of a poisoned tree, he rubbed his hands together, revelling in the frigid embrace that mirrored the depths of his depravity—a darkness that knew no bounds. Each movement sent ripples of dread through the very fabric of reality, heralding the impending doom that lay hidden within his malevolent soul.

As the ominous silence was shattered by the approach of his loyal footman, his eyes gleamed with a hunger for power that knew no mercy, a hunger born of pure, unadulterated evil. The footman, a mere pawn in his masterful grand design, approached with trembling steps, unaware of the abyss into which he unwittingly trod.

In that moment, amidst the twisted landscape of Alatheia's cursed domain, a game of wickedness and corruption unfolded. Each calculated gesture was a stroke of pure malevolence, each move a testament to the depths of his depravity. As he prepared to unleash his next act of unspeakable horror upon the world, the very air seemed to thicken with dread, for none could fathom the true extent of the darkness that dwelled within him.

"What?!" He snapped. 

"Sire!" The servant replied, ducking his head as he fell into an awkward bow. 'I apologise for interrupting you. Please forgive me.'

"Just spit it out." Kezran snarled. 

"Uhm, I-," his servant began, stumbling over his words as he raised his head again, "I bring news of your players, sire." Kezran's twisted grin stretched across his face like a gash in the fabric of reality itself, a grim reflection of the darkness that consumed his soul. The hooded servant's words were the final chord in a symphony of spite that had been orchestrated with vindictive care. "The conditions have been fulfilled, sire," the servant's voice, a mere whisper in the vast woodland, echoed with an eerie resonance.

Kezran's eyes gleamed with a sinister light as he absorbed the significance of those words. His skeletal fingers, talons of darkness, curled with anticipation. The air crackled with tension, heavy with the promise of impending doom.

'Conditions... fulfilled?' Kezran mused aloud, his voice a sinister melody that resonated with the very essence of despair. With a triumphant gesture, he raised his bony fingers to the heavens, a sacrilegious salute to the forces of chaos that he so eagerly embraced. 'Finally! Finally!' he cackled, a sound that curdled the blood and sent shivers down the spines of even the hardiest souls. 

The sky itself seemed to recoil in horror, thunder rolling like the drums of war, heralding the impending cataclysm.

With a predatory grace, Kezran swept through the cavern's jagged maw, his tattered cloak billowing behind him like the wings of a vulture descending upon its prey. The crowd, his unwitting pawns, roared in anticipation, their adulation a twisted hymn to the darkness that consumed them all.

This was the moment he had longed for, the culmination of his depraved machinations. As he stepped into the abyss, the darkness welcomed him like a lover, its embrace promising power beyond imagining.

For on this night of apprehension and gluttony, with each deliberate stride, he closed the distance, his presence commanding the very essence of divinity. The air crackled with terror as he reached out, seizing the power of the Gods with a single, resolute motion. Time itself seemed to hold its breath, for in that moment, he was destined to become more than mortal—but a being of unfathomable might, shrouded in the cloak of destiny.

May his players take their mark.