The Shadow Divide was not a simple weapon. It was a ceremony, an unholy rite that split the world of its reality and let the beasts from the Shadow Realm invade the human world. These were entities of pure darkness, creatures of supreme being and unspeakable horror. They were the final stand, a ballsy throw at the white wall that might swing the war's momentum, or rupture the world into total anarchy.
The ceremony took place in the blood-red moon, at the top of the highest mountain of the Dysi Mountains, a land ruled by magic dark. The four sect heads, arrayed in ceremonial robes, circled a giant black obsidian altar, chanting in a language that seemed to resonate with the power of the ages. As their outcry escalated, the air above the altar rippled and warped. A crack appeared in the air, widening into a gaping maw of swirling darkness.
From this rift, they emerged. Not in a disorganized rush, but with a chilling, calculated precision. First came the Harbingers, tall, skeletal figures cloaked in shadows, their eyes burning with an eerie blue light. They walked with serpentine agility, their articulated bony fingers drawing figures out of the air and widening the gap and reinforcing the link to the Shadow World.
Followed by the Nightmares, horrific fiends with bent appendages and blades of steel. They were covered in shadow, their bodies were in motion and constantly fluctuating, each impossible to make out what their true form actually is. Their being there cast a blanket of unremitting terror that emanated even from the most hardened of Ouranios fighters who stood on the verge of collapsing from the sheer shock of the moment.
In the midst of the chaotic pockmark of blackness there came forth a being that instilled absolute terror. This was the Shadow Lord, a being of immense power, whose very presence seemed to warp the reality around him. He was very large and imposing, in dark armor which seemed bottomless in the way the light went into the deepest recesses of it. His face was hidden behind a helm, but his eyes, visible through the narrow slits, burned with a cold, malevolent intelligence.
The Ouranios bosses, however, even calling these beings, were clearly terrified of them. They had set loose an entity that they could hardly understand or control, an entity that threatened to swallow them all.
News of the Shadow Divide reached Nyx quickly. His agents discovered the unusual rite, the rupture, and the appearance of horrifying beings. He knew this was a game-changer. He had been confronted with human armies before, but these creatures coming from the Shadow Realm were a completely different kind of enemy.
He sat down with his commanders, presenting the circumstances to them. "The Ouranios Alliance has made a desperate move, he said, his voice grim. They have created an entry point to the Shadow Realm, releasing entities of absolute night themselves. We are now going to have to fight a war that we have never fought before.
Nyx knew that conventional tactics would be useless against these creatures. They could resist all physical assaults, as all of their power came from the world of shadow. He needed a new strategy, a way to fight against beings that existed beyond the realm of mortal combat.
He returned to the grimoire, searching for any information on how to combat these creatures. He read the old manuscripts, decoded enigmatic sentences and practiced extinct rites. He knew that the key lay in understanding the nature of the shadows themselves, in finding a way to turn their own power against them.
The scene was there for a new stage of the conflict, a fight not only for the sake of land/revenge, but for the very life of the world of the living. The Shadow Divide had opened, and the darkness was pouring through.