The sky split open.
Not with thunder, nor with lightning, but with something far more unnatural. A jagged tear, shimmering like shattered glass in an array of different colors hovered above the marketplace of Eldoria's capital, Veldrith. The air warped and twisted around it, distorting the cobblestone streets and the shouts of merchants into eerie echoes.
A time breach.
Karos stared on in both equal parts amazement and fear, memories from his past flooding his mind. He had seen his first time breach many years ago. He had been only a boy when a rift had opened near the eastern farmlands. He remembered the way the wheat had turned to ash and how the ground had flickered between seasons—lush green one moment, frozen with snow the next. Livestock rapidly aged before his eyes, leaving the lingering scent of fear and death in the air before they disappeared into dust. He had watched in horror as a man dressed in armor that was centuries old staggered out of the breach and crumbled to dust before his very eyes.
With a few deep breaths, Karos pulled himself from those chilling memories, his gaze once again falling to the breach in front of him. This one was different, he realized.
It was not a steady warping of time as the first one had been. This one pulsed and writhed like a beast preparing to devour its meal.
Karos stood frozen as a figure emerged from the distortion—a woman adorned in silver armor; her deep-blue cloak was tattered at the edges, embroidered with the insignia of a long dead kingdom and her blonde hair swirling around her like a storm. She carried a sword unlike any he had seen, its blade glimmering with shifting patterns, changing from longsword to scimitar and back again, as if the metal itself couldn't decide what century it belonged to.
The marketplace fell into a hushed silence as people backed away, some whispering prayers, others clutching their loved ones. A few even dared to run, thinking that it would save them.
The woman stumbled forward, her eyes—silver, like the breach—locking onto Karos. "You," she gasped, her voice layered, echoing as if she was speaking through the weight of time itself. "What year is this?"
Karos looked around, sure that she must be talking to someone else.
"Must I repeat myself?" The woman barked in annoyance.
Karos hesitated once again before answering. "It's the 3rd Age, year 742."
She exhaled sharply. "Too soon… or too late." Her grip tightened on the sword. "I don't have much time."
Before Karos could respond the breach behind her convulsed, its edges trembling violently. The marketplace wavered. The buildings flickered—becoming ruins, then reassembling, then flickering again. A stall that had once sold apples now held rusted weapons, then suddenly turned to dust.
And then they came through.
Two figures, clad in shadowy armor that seemed to flicker between forms emerged from the maw. Their faces were obscured by a black, shifting void where their heads should be, their bodies draped in the same eerie glow as the breach.
The silent onlookers that had been watching, their gazes locked on this mysterious woman, suddenly remember the danger that now hung in the middle of their city and soon began to scream and run for cover. The twisted and warped atmosphere of the breach made their cries seem even more unnatural, what started as a group of yells and screams soon turned to a cacophony of undulating noise.
The woman cursed under her breath. "Rift Reapers, DAMN!" She wrapped a practiced hand around the hilt of her sword, turning her unwavering gaze to the rift, ready to face her foes.
The creatures moved unnaturally, their steps silent, their forms dragging reality along with them. Wherever they passed, the ground cracked—not the stone, but time itself.
One of them raised a twisted, jagged blade and pointed it at the woman. The voice that followed was wrong. It echoed from places and times that should not exist.
"You do not belong here."
Neither did they.
Before Karos could even think or react, the woman lunged forward, her blade meeting the first of the two creatures in a clash that shouldn't have been possible—one that sent ripples through time itself.
The fight had begun.
And Karos was trapped in the middle of it.