Chapter 1

Dalaran, Cross Isle, Autumn, Year 614 of the Light

The land was stained with the blood of men. Such stains had seemed to take to the sky as well, as it too turned a crimson pigment that mirrored the death of mortals.

Great citadels, standing for thousands of years, surrounded by a massive arcane-enchanted stone wall; many had fallen this hour; the darkest of hours. The symphony of destruction played its part everywhere the fight took it.

Once again, the land was besieged by conflict.

Above in the nearly undisturbed skies, the great shadow hung over them all. Only the greatest noticed it and too late was their realization. From the north the undead Scourge had wiped across the land, taking those living and turning them into twisted mockeries of life that served their Dark Lord without consent. And such a distraction was all that was needed by the Lords of the demonic legions from beyond the world.

It was their time once again to besiege the world and bask it in their unholy glory. Time had finally come upon them as they passed through the great warps in reality that their earthen subservient had managed to create.

Despite the work of the Guardians of Tirisfal toward them from the mortal realm for these thousands of years, the tides of darkness had returned, and the Reign of Chaos had begun…

Ruins of Caer Darrow, Quel'thalas-Lordaeron Border, End of Winter, 612, Two years earlier

The palpable silence filled the cold, dank air. Only the dripping of water was to be heard within the cavernous labyrinth of tunnels under the ancient ruins above.

It was in these dark tunnels that he had set to his task, assigned by the master. He had taken to the zeal with his task and quickly returned to this land to rally those who might listen to the callings of the great Lord.

And it was so that the Cult of the Damned had begun, spreading slowly, quietly, like a thin rattler snake in the blue-green grass of the Arathi-Highlands. It was here that he, Kel'thuzad Amar, had set the base to his work, the world oblivious to his and the Cult's existence.

Once, so long ago now, he had been the aspiring mage of Dalaran, the Land of Magic, home of the Wizard. He was a prodigy who had risen through the ranks as the few others had before him. He had reached even into the Violet Citadel, into the Council of Air, before the truth had been revealed to him. As a prestigious wizard of rank, he had accumulated a wealth that would make anybody happy, yet…

It was during the Second War against the orcish Horde that he had seen the true way of things. In those bleak times he had witnessed the true potential of magic, in the arts that the foolish, squeamish mages of the Violet Citadel had utterly shunned; the magnificent art of necromancy.

Necromancy!

The magic of trapping the blackness from the Great Dark Beyond and harnessing its infinite energy, to bring life back to those who had been dead, in true words, the Art of the Dead.

Kel'thuzad Amar, he, had been so impressed with these magics that the demon-possessed orcish warlocks used, that against the strict will of the Council of whom had ordered him never to delve into the dark magics, had committed the so-called crime anyway and began to dabble with its untapped potential secretly.

Yet the art had required so much of him, and he had not the power to fulfill its true potential, even as such a powerful wizard as he; at least, until the day he had heard the Great Culling. It was the great thing that he had been searching for all these years, its tendrils of power calling out to those powerful enough to come to it, to serve it, to bask in its eternal glory. Here, he saw the ability to tap his true potential in the dark arts, and gain ultimate power next to the Caller who had sent its culling across the land.

And so he had set his journey, resigned from the paranoid and fearful Council of Air, and left the weak Dalaran for the last time as one of their mages.

The trek was long, and over the months he found his way to the lands of northern Lordaeron, where he was able to procure a ship for his own ends. Once he had the transportation he was able to travel to the place where the power had first called from, the icy recesses of Northrend, a place so cold and desolate that it chilled to the bone whatever human set eyes on it.

But not he! Urged on by the promise of eternal power and paradise he saw the land as something near holy, it as home to the unbelievable power that had called out. And across this Promised Land he traveled for a long time, many times near death by his lonesome. But he had used his wit and skill of magic to keep him alive, to traverse the dark, unexplored, land.