The Mask Slips

Chaos had swallowed the palace whole.

Elara and Kaelen emerged from the cellars into a nightmare. The grand ballroom, scene of elegant celebrations just hours ago, had become a warzone. Light-crystals had shattered, plunging the space into flickering darkness broken only by the glow of active magic.

Order paladins fought shadow-creatures—Hollows, Elara realized with horror, formed from the corrupted essence Voss had released. The creatures were mindless, hungry, consuming everything they touched. Nobles screamed and ran, trampling each other in their desperation to escape.

And at the center of it all, floating above the wreckage of his own making, stood High Luminary Voss.

He had transformed. His white robes blazed with corrupted light—not the pure gold of divine Luxism, but something sickly, green-tinged, wrong. His body had stretched, thinned, become something barely human. And his eyes—his eyes were holes into a void that should not exist.

"Behold!" His voice boomed, carrying over the screams. "The ancient evil that threatened our kingdom! See what the shadow-touched have unleashed!"

He gestured, and more Hollows surged from the rift that had opened in the ballroom floor—a wound in reality leaking darkness like blood.

"He is framing us," Kaelen snarled. "He released this, and he will claim we caused it."