It was years since Aiden had first picked up the Guardian's Blade. The Sanctuaries of the Guardians proliferated across the land. Lyra, Caelum, and Aiden carried on their work of training the next generation of the Guardians, ensuring that the light would never fade. For many years, the world was quiet—perhaps even a little too quiet. Aiden had thought that the shadow of Eldoria would wind down after the overthrow of the Shadow King, but there was a sense that people could not stop feeling.
It began as whispers in the wind, murmurs, furtive and slinking on the wind, as if carried by an unseen force. Reports came in from remote villages: unnatural storms, people disappearing, dark magic reappearing out of nowhere. Eldoria was not as safe as thought.
I do not like this," Lyra said one evening, her sharp eyes scanning the horizon. She'd always had a feel for the land: she could sense its pulse, feel the slightest distortions before they made their appearance. "Something's coming. Something. darker.".
Aiden felt it too. The Blade of the Guardian seemed to stir and pulse with an unquiet energy as if to feel it knew the coming peril. And the world was stirring again, unrest unsettling that peace they had fought so hard to establish.
Caelum, ever the scholar, had begun to dig through ancient tomes that spoke of the history of the Guardians. Ancient tales of light and shadow, Caelum had discovered something disturbing—that once there had been an ancient order of darkness before the Shadow King had risen. This order, known as the Eclipsed Ones, was said to be extinct. But recent events were stirring their very old, forgotten magic.
"We have to be prepared," Caelum said, his voice serious. "The Eclipsed Ones return with their magic, too. Their power is said to have been on par with the Guardians' own strength."
Lyra folded her arms. "And you think it's something to do with the storms?"
"I do," Aiden replied. "The darkness we faced is nothing in comparison to what comes next.".
And as they forced on to seek out the new disturbances, so they chanced upon proofs of the Return of the Eclipsed Ones multiplied by the road; cursed lands from which life seemed drained from the earth, where flowers bloomed not and beasts roamed not; hidden temples of forgotten gods that vibrated with dark magic. The signs were clear. And as if he stood alone in the midst of a desert, solitary and surrounded by nothing, in the distance the shadow of an army began to take form-dark figures moving like a tide across the land.