As shadowspawn across the realm exulted with one voice in victory, Creation wept. Night fell across the Prime Material as something unseen, something ancient, something fathomless and primordial and utterly beyond the fragile confines of mortal comprehension, at last shirked free its bindings and opened wide its violet eyes.

The shadowgate collapsed on itself with force rivalling a thousand unstable singularities. Pouring out through the void in reality, Immortal Dark sloshed into existence in a bubbling, viscous tide of stygian shadow. Roiling essence revelled in its newfound freedom, frothing helicals giving rise to a surging spectrum of terrifying vicissitudes. Shapeless and incomprehensible in nature, the writhing, shifting, trembling, heaving morass of eventide everlasting flexed its might and abyssal black descended, the cold, coiling wyrm that is despair tightening its vice-like grip upon heart and mind and soul amidst the gaping thrash of the wounded world about. Light turned to dark, colour retreated before the grey haze and, at long-awaited last, misery ascended Her supernal throne.

"Aze zveres rilijev Zed mys renmyr... zhet as. Aze Zed as arenys, jilacz Ji Nota tsaj, svam dvi fereczes vyh Ji ojnov nej."

(We believe this to translate roughly as: "You mortal creatures believe you understand Me... but no. You cannot imagine Me, because I am Darkness, and I arrived before the planes.")

In that first moment of Her entry to Prime, countless denizens and inhabitants across the world succumbed to despair and abandoned hope. Mass suicides from Mournhold to Arbothia to Saluria and beyond made bloody streets and anguished towns, so many Sapience natives unable to bear the Shadow Mother's presence. The transcendental might of Fundamental Darkness reigned over the Prime Plane, Her thoughts weaving themselves directly into the minds of those neither bound by Severn (viewing them as thralls already) nor steeped in a duamvi's holy spirit (repelling the dark intrusion). She sheared away the sanity of those vulnerable, seizing at thought and mind and bringing them all - thousands, legions - under Her sway as Shadowbound. While so affected, Her unassailable will subsumed the victim's own. Autonomy faded away, replaced with a sudden need, a hunger profuse and unquenchable, minds bent to a singular notion: "Ohlsana Eternal, I am ready to serve."

The Shadowbound blinked and stirred into motion against their will and without their input, their bodies moving to the tune of Ohlsana. They began the slow, inevitable trudge toward the Siroccian Mountains, and though the Shadow Mother's power rioted in their minds, their own consciousness remained, the awareness of their shallow binding stark as they realised their protection from the true depths of uncontrollable, mindless servitude by dint of Iosyne's closing gambit. Iosyne's heart had been disconnected from Her body for centuries, sparing some parrt of Her true self from becoming completely subsumed. In this moment of domination, it was then that Her final act for Sapience -- Her final expression of the Strategy for which She was made -- would come into play, infiltrating the shadowbound network to spare mortals from complete, total assimilation.

Gods and mortals alike mourned the oppressive weight of Ohlsana's interminable dominion, thousands falling to Her sway in the first fleeting moment. Their strength renewed against a Pantheon reeling in despondent grief, the Generals redoubled their efforts amidst the howled lamentations of a mourning-wrought requiem, sounding across the lands in bleak, sombre refrain. Bent to the will of Ohlsana, Rhulin Glintspear dexterously climbed the Ascendril Lighthouse, smashing the Lance of the Gods - his labour of love for so long - to bits in a desperate attempt to garner the Shadow Mother's favour, calling out "For Mother!" in a near-unrecognisable voice.

Joining Rhulin were the voices of Kalena, Rijetta, and Whirran, the zeal of Sapience no less fervent as they each of them in turn bellowed out exhortations and praises in the name of Mother Dark. The un-bound called back with determined shouts of their own, Rasani and Eliadon and Xavin in particular urging people to resist and not give up hope. Then, as one voice, one flickering torch in the horrors of the deep dark, the surviving duamvi shouted aloud their defiance: Until the dawn, we are the Light!

Desperation warred with despair on the face of Damariel in His withdrawal from the field, the God's pleading voice calling on the Exarchs to join Him in flight. Racing across the skies, the four retreated to the Siroccian Mountains, taking shelter beneath Ethne's great bell in a defiant final stand. Girded by notes of grim resolve, He called out a rallying cry to any who yet resisted the Shadow's call. "Until the dawn, come though it may not," He painfully intoned, "I am the Light."

Those few, those precious few spared the tune of Ohlsana's saturnine canticle entered the Siroccians moments before a horde of shadowspawn to dwarf any and all which came before converged upon their position. Closing ranks, subdued illuminance flared for one last battle as the Exarchs steeled themselves against the oncoming tide, while behind them Damariel lifted the tree-sized clapper upon the great bell. Gallantly striving to maintain hope, the forlorn tones of Damariel called out in plea: "Ring the bell." The God loosed His grip and the great clapper swung free to strike at glowing metal in hope of a new dawn.

It began in the depths of blood and bone, low and resonant as what was old became new, the sacred metals forged beneath Smith's hand evoking a chill rippling through body and soul. Building in intensity with its boundless race across tumultuous skies, the singular call of the bell unlike any other broke like a crashing wave to roar in thunderous, joyous, sonorous acclaim, Divine song joining to beauteous harmony while the dark star above trembled in its purloined position amidst the vault.

The wash of unearthly sound rolled over all, unceasing and seemingly unending as the Divine music - the desperate swan song of the Gods and Sapience alike - carried forth, elsewhere, to the ear of She for Whom it was forever intended, from First Moment to Last Peal of Hope amongst the all-encompassing despair. Across the hills and plains it bounded, sweeping the mountaintops and broaching the deserts. It penetrated the lowest caverns and stirred the treacherous depths to rumbling, a symphony of the holy spirit given life of its own to chime without end. Surrounded on all sides by the Gods of Sapience, the Shadow Generals flinched, stunned by the bell's song as shadowspawn across the continent screamed in horror, eradicated by the booming notes of sacred condemnation. The clarion tones of the great bell passed through the forms of the shadowbound in waves of excruciating agony. As the legions of shadowspawn expired, they pressed on, their ties to "Mother" weaker than the others - spared from that fate by the Malevolent's intervention.

Before even the Gods could capitalise on its faltering guard and seize the opening, the Firstborn rallied, all signs of debilitation falling away. Unmoved by the song and unhurried in Her traversal south toward the great bell, the Shadow Mother treaded a path of midnight, the insidious mass comprising Her form perpetually metamorphosing in a terrible metronome of twisted apparitions.

Amidst the clamour, the Warlord raised His voice, declaring that, though They may fall, the traitor as He named Her, He would not suffer to survive Them. A snarl of despairing rage tore free from the mouth of Bamathis and He stepped back from Ozeroth, the Hunter seamlessly taking His place. Strife scanned the battlefield with hawklike precision and alighted before Nega-Iosyne, stunned by the bell and under siege from Abhorash, Dhar, and Ivoln. Claw and scythe and jagged earth assailed Her, but Bamathis turned Them all aside.

Pitiless and stolid, the Warlord raised Caelestis over His head, staring down at the betrayer God with unforgiving eyes. Before Iosyne could recover, Bamathis drove the weapon through Her distended thorax, silver fire sparking along the length and breadth of the weapon. Between grit teeth and unflinching resolve, He brought the Blade of Sapience up, sundering Malevolence in two. Sanguineous essence burst free from the corpse and dissipate into nothingness, leaving behind naught but a translucent red haze - sentence passed in execution and Her displaced essence scattered to the four winds.

No answer followed from the bell's clarion call, only the unwavering advance of Ohlsana, unmoved by Light's last prayer. The bell fell still and in its silent wake, hope's final kernel died, waning in a palpable psychic pall, the light of Creation all but left to bleed out from a great wound borne upon reality once again. In a steady, terrible ebb, the sensation compounded, the threat of its totality evoking both primal panic and the prey-whisper of resignation, to succumb and arise nevermore.

The accelerating onslaught of the Generals heralded a clash renewed as Gods met shadowbound and Shadow Mother in battle once more, flame and fury and onrushing Divine essence hurled at Their foes. The heavens blistered and burned in the cascading flood of Divinity unrestrained in a desperate hope of reprieve. But no matter Their assaults, no matter Their strategies, no matter Their struggles, the approach of Ohlsana was unerring: a ravening void of insatiable hunger and unimaginable power creeping with cruelly languid inevitability toward the south. Eldritch monstrosities congealed from the twisted tsalmaveth that was the Greater Dark, Her pustulent manifestation shedding foetid husks of blight-filmed aberrations all across the landscape. The clanging bell sang with sonorous authority again and again and again, each resonant chime of crisp, strident clarity eradicating shadowspawn in droves. But they never stopped coming.

Ohlsana shrugged off the essence hurled at Her from the rapidly weakening Gods, the clouds boiling overhead to weep noxious tears upon all which dwelt below. Abhorash stumbled; the Exarchs became overwhelmed; the exhausted Gods faltered; even ancient Tanixalthas slowed in Her winged flight, so much of Her power spent in vain.

Questing tendrils of blackened gloam extended from the unknowable empty of Immortal Dark, unfurling across the firmament like umbral branches. The web of midnight joined with ropelike veins spilling from the hands of Ozeroth to climb the vertex of the sky dome and empower the dark star to wreathe the world in all-consuming shade. Something broke in Sapience as primal terror pressed in all around, and the churning mass of shadow, the spectre Whose darkness predates the night, gathered Her full power. "Vycz Ji Etolijak vej tsorur, svam tijel rijiles sijuvuv suv." Her voice commanded the world. "Now I will devour Aetolia, and all the grieving mortals upon it."

Tears streamed down Damariel's face as He wept openly, fear dominating His countenance. The booming of the great bell drowned out His anguished sobs as He desperately rang it over and over and over and over and the aura of light, the glow that casts no shadow, that which so defines Him as the Lord of Truth, faded. Ethne's bell fell silent again as the strength of the Exarchs dwindled and Damariel slumped, diminished and heartbroken.

Endless was Ohlsana's swarm and endless was the Empire Ever Dark, the fate of the world spun on an invisible axis of waning hope and fading mercy, the held breath of Creation at last exhaled in a harrowing knell as all went black and shadow rose to consume all.

Penned by my hand on Quensday, the 13th of Arios, in the year 505 MA.
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