(Page 1 of 16) Eternal Dawn: Coming of the Blessed (Chapter 1: The Calling) by Paul CroslandSUMMARY: This is a draft version of Chapter 1 for my story. It is currently 60,000 words +, 7 1/2 chapters in length.Alphania spins endlessly somewhere within the infinite vastness of the universe, each spin bringing a new age to our world, the only known place where time for life flows. Its chaotic mind is neither living, nor non-living, and it is with its immortal power that humans lie forever within its hold. To conquer Alphania would mean the destruction of everything. Humans have always understood this, and respected that which owns them. That which is a part of them in itself. Through all its chaos, Alphania rules indefenitely. For all of us, and yet for none of us. Both for the struggling animals walking under the stars at night, and the lifeless skeletons that forever lie burried beneath the cracked earth.
The eternal spins of Alphania is what the Priestess', and the world at large now considers the only religion to have survived the turmoil of humankind's evolution. Wars have come and gone through the Cycles; the term used to describe each spin of God; but they have always held little effect on people's beliefs of what lies far within the heavens above. To maintain the balance of existence with this unimaginible force was the only thought for anyone, and nobody had ever considered anything otherwise. Battles may be lost, may be won, but no matter the number of lives that fall away into timelessness; back into the sub-consciousness of Alphania; this balance must always be kept. And for the most part it was, until a new age dawned which was the first of its kind in human history, a time when the one end of the scale was filled with heavy stones, tilting the so-called Cycle of Ages into an odd and dangerous balance. It was when the first of those arrived who had discovered a means to grab at some of Alphania's power.
Many said that all would change before his eventual defeat, if this might even so be accomplished. The man who had come from the far northeast of the world, from lands never before explored, and never before seen. A location on the very borders of the earth itself, which historians had always considered a forgotten place, a lost realm from an unknown time thousands upon thousands of years earlier, if even existing back then. Not even the Priestess', those powerful religious rulers who had taken Alphania into their hearts, were certain. But from whatever region he came from, what he brought with him was a horror never before felt. The Man of the East, he came to
be called, and the name became synonomous with the evil blanket that had fallen upon the harmonious equilibrium of the world.
Sadly, the start of mankind's darkest war was now common knowledge. The Man of the East was said to have found his way into Esternia, a cold and harsh nation near the very tip of the world, and deceitfuly swayed the region's small communities of villages into rebellion. This was followed by an ever growing number of supporters mixing themselves with the ranks as they swept southwards, eventually to leave many of the countries' great cities into ruins. Only a very small number of western towns and villages had been bypassed, and all of this a mere twenty five years ago.
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