The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. In one Age, called the Third Age by some, an Age yet to come, an Age long past, a wind rose in the Mountains of Maor. The wind was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it was a beginning.
Southward the wind blew, descending from lofty mountains and coursing through leafy forests. It passed into the place known as the Desolation. It passed through a band of adventurers, four in number. Here was Fate's hand. These were Fate's tools.
In another world, in the same age, an Age yet to come, an Age long past, another wind rose in the Mountains of Mist. This wind was not the beginning. But it was a beginning.
Born below the ever cloudcapped peaks that gave the mountains their name, the wind blew east, out across the Sand Hills, once the shore of a great ocean, before the Breaking of the World. Down it flailed into the Two Rivers, into the tangled forest called the Westwood, and beat at two men walking with a cart and horse down the rockstrewn track called the Quarry Road. Here was Fate's hand. Here was Fate's tool.
Unaware, the two groups took the same path, took different paths, towards the same destiny. A great destiny. A terrible destiny. Fate's hand had yet to be played.