THE APOCALYPSE SAGA

PROLOGUE


A young man stood at the balcony of a huge tower. Before him, under him, stretched a vast wasteland. The sun was rising far in the horizon, the pale rays glancing off of the obsidian tower. They framed the man in a half-halo, illuminating his long golden hair, tied in a warrior's knot and let flow loose down his back.

He was holding a staff, and the jagged crystal implanted in the top caught the sun's growing light, tainting it red and dark. The light played across the back of his black cloak, making it seem stained with blood.

The sky was dawning in bright orange and crimson.

Around the sun's core writhed a black shadow, huge, wreathed in flame. Wings sprouted, and the shadow turned, and it blotted the sun from the sky.

It passed. The sun continued its slow rise. The edges looked nibbled at, eaten. The light shifted with the flickering instability of the dying.

Mokushi . . . a voice whispered.

He turned, and walked inside.