Prologue: Echoes in the Stone

Long before the whispers took root, before the mountain's heart pulsed with shadows, a lone sentinel stood guard. Carved from the same obsidian as the peaks, she was the mountain's daughter, its first and fiercest defender. Anya, they called her, her name echoing with the wind that sculpted the crags.

Time flowed differently there, measured not in sunrises and sunsets, but in the slow, grinding groans of the ancient stone. Anya watched seasons bleed into one another, her gaze fixed on the horizon where whispers were born. For even in the primordial silence, echoes stirred, wisps of darkness yearning for form.

One day, the whispers grew louder, a cacophony of malice slithering through the mist. A tremor shook the foundations, a groan of unease from the mountain's soul. Anya knew then that the darkness had taken root, tendrils of oblivion reaching for the world beyond the peaks.

With a roar that echoed across the valleys, she descended from her stony vigil. Her obsidian hair whipped in the wind as she strode towards the source of the growing shadows. In her hand, she gripped the Heartstone, a shard of the mountain itself, pulsed with an emerald light that defied the encroachment of darkness.

For eons, she battled, a whirlwind of stone and fury against the ever-shifting shadow. But the enemy was vast, its tendrils insidious, and even Anya's unwavering will began to falter. The Heartstone flickered, its emerald glow dimming as the darkness surged.

With a final, desperate blow, Anya shattered the Heartstone, its radiance erupting in a blinding flash. The mountain convulsed, spewing plumes of smoke and fire. The shadows recoiled, shrieking in fury, but the victory came at a terrible cost. The Heartstone's energy, her own life force, bled into the wound, sealing it but leaving Anya weakened, a mere echo of her former self.

Exhausted, she retreated into the mountain's embrace, her consciousness fading into the whispers that now permeated the stone. Her memory became a tapestry woven into the mountain's heart, a cautionary tale waiting to be unraveled. And so, Anya waited, a silent monument to sacrifice, her spirit a promise, an echo in the stone, until the day the whispers once again called forth a champion…