Prologue

The rainstorm hung low on that dark cloudy night, obscuring the heavens and the stars that served as their prying eyes.

The enormous red moon hung low, giving off a faint light, bloody and ominous, revealing beneath it an enormous plain of grass, and a strange assortment of stone blocks arranged in a queer circular formation.

Any normal earthling would recognize these at a glance, for it was none other than the famed Stonehenge, but something was off.

This late at night, the ropes that should have been omnipresent and the guards that should have been patrolling around with their bright flashlights had long disappeared, melted away from the face of the earth. Then nearby road had eerily disappeared, and only grass was left, almost like it had never existed.

And in the center of the enormous stone circle, on a cross shaped mark, a patch of darkness was slowly spreading. This darkness was blacker than black, deeper than the deepest depths of the sea, and heralded misfortune and death. Growing to around the size of one of the nearby pillars, the shadow floated in midair, as thick as a blanket, and almost watery in appearance.

Suddenly, a foot stepped out of it, wrapped in shiny black leather, it was a standard straight boot, clacking strangely as it hit the ground, and the rest of the man followed behind it.

It was an old gentleman, but everything he wore was black. Black undershirt, black tie, black top hat with a shiny black buckle, black swallowtail coat, black gloves, everything.

The gentleman slowly stepped out of the dark portal, which had now shrunk to the size of a pea, and he gently scrutinized the 5,000 year old stone pillars around him, and chuckled amusedly to himself.

Taking out an ebony pocket watch from inside his overcoat, and flipping it open, what was inside was no mere clock face, but a holographic image projecting itself above the watch, with so many dials and hands that were attached everywhere, any mortal would have long fainted at just trying to understand what they referred to after a single glance.

Nodding, as if satisfied, the old gentleman placed his watch back in his pocket, and reached out in front of him.

Slowly swiping his hand across the air, a dark indigo cane slowly materialized as his hand traced a line in the air, gripping the head before it could be seen.

It was a work of art, that cane. Made of black, purplish wood, strange carvings of words and symbols inundated the body, the head a polished knob of silver, with mythical creatures carved beneath it, almost as if they were worshiping, no, carrying an orb of purest Mithril.

Twirling it within his palms, the old gentlemen opened his mouth, and an inhuman, shrieking croak came out, guttural intonations touching on the fabric of reality itself as the voice continued unhurriedly.

"gdklef dsifje adyed wedfas duhyrnyais"

The stones around him began to tremble and glow, as the enormous pillars began to shed stone flakes everywhere, revealing eerie blue lines having been carved deep within them, invisible and unseeable until they had been called upon once more.

Glowing, and eventually becoming a piercing blue light, Stonehenge itself was brighter than lightning, but it was smothered by the dark clouds and mist above them.

Laughing as he chanted, the old man became wilder and wilder, his twirling of the cane became more and more fierce as he himself began dancing to some silent beat, as inhuman garbling continued out of his throat.

But then, it choked to a stop.

For as the stones carved with light blue mana lines began charging, the space between the stone blocks began glowing milky white, as if fog had been trapped between them.

Stone blocks began rising out of the ground, completing the original formation of multiple hollow squares surrounding him, something that would normally be a cause of joy for the old man, but even as they formed, beneath them, more and more pillars were rising.

Like a net, like a giant rising out of the ground, the stone blocks rose and defied the laws of physics, creating an enormous skeleton of a sphere, with the holes between them filled with different colored lights.

The top few were filled with white fog as the old man had intended, but beneath them, a brilliant rainbow of colors had appeared.

Crimson red, icy blue, dark black, and even a solid chocolate brown that struck fear even into the depths of the old man's heart.

He had long stopped his chant, but the portals kept forming, and strange things began to appear and disappear throughout the sphere.

An enormous demon that wouldn't look out of place in Dante's Inferno flew out of one such orange, magma colored fog, and vanished within a dark black portal. Strange light balls spilled out of the old mans summoned portals and flew everywhere.

"NO"

He cried, the first human word he had spoken since he appeared in this place, and flew after one of them.

It still denied him however, as a gray portal with a particularly strong suction force "ate" it before the old man could do anything.

Growling in anger, he swung his cane, and a black shadow spear blasted out at the stone blocks surrounding it.

Sadly, it barely shook the foundations, and there wasn't even a crack that appeared within it.

Suddenly feeling an ominous chill down his back, the old man finally realized what a horrible predicament this trap by the ancient humans, who he had long looked down on, really was.

Screaming, incorporeal black wings ripped out of his back, ruining his very fancy suit, and as he twirled around, black shadow blasts bursted around the sphere.

It was useless.

The stone pillars simply absorbed the blasts, and more and more monsters and humans, and animals, and strange aliens, and all manner of items flew out of each and every portal that existed within the strange sphere formed of countless stone pillars.

They were disintegrated by the old mans shadow blasts, struck each other and imploded, or vaporized upon coming into contact with another portal that wasn't their own.

And with horror, the old man realized he was also becoming dislocated from the chaotic forces within.

His blasts no longer did anything, and the more he struggled, the weaker he became.

Eventually, he could no longer resist the force of one particularly stubborn portal, and slowly became sucked into it.

Howling with anger, and swearing vengeance on every descendent of Ancient Earth he could find, he was slowly sucked away into another white portal, only this one was far thicker and like a cloud compared to a bit of fog than the one summoned by the old man.

Helplessly, the old man could only watch as his body was torn apart, eaten and devoured by the portal, miserably screeching as he was ripped apart by the spatial turbulence.

As soon as he fully disappeared into the portal, suddenly, all was quiet.

The portals slowly stopped functioning, and items and animals stopped spilling out of each of them.

The fog within each square of stone blocks that made up the sphere slowly flickered and disappeared, as they slowly began sinking, back into the ground, leaving only a few broken pillars above them.

The dark mist that had long pervaded the area dispersed, revealing multiple guards that were little more than dried corpses and a rotten black strip that was originally the road that bordered the ancient stone formation.

Nothing had happened, save for the strange deaths of a few guards, and those could easily be explained by anything other than the supernatural. Or could it?

For one single guard was still alive and breathing well, slowly reaching his arm out to a secret device hidden within his uniform, informing a certain supernatural organization of all that had transpired.

********************

Within an ordinary household, a young teenager was sleeping.

His room was as one would expect of anyone, filled with posters and figurines, and a stench of a man cave filled the room.

Suddenly, a tiny dot of starlight appeared within the center of his room, and it slowly whirled and expanded into something similar to a miniature Milky Way.

Out of it popped a tiny white sphere, which jumped up and hopped around the room before pausing, sensing the boy's living energy, and plopping onto his chest, where it was slowly absorbed and melted within his body.

Yet another dot of light appeared, spinning itself into a galaxy, this time a mix of fiery red, and dull grey, and a bleeding, black arm appeared outside of it.

The hand was nothing more than lumps of charcoal attached to a somewhat presentable hand, and the forearm was melted and attached to a black cloth, the remnants of a once fancy suit.

This time, nothing followed behind it, and the severed arm, bleeding and burnt still moved by itself, as if alive.

It wiggled its fingers, and turned its palm around the tiny room, almost as if the hand had eyes before focusing on the sleeping teenager on the nearby bed.

Suddenly realizing what had transpired, the arm uprighted itself, the stump landing on the ground, shivering with rage, while a black Shadowbolt began forming within its palm, ready to blast the boy into smithereens.

As if it had remembered something however, the hand paused, and the Shadowy projectile forming within it suddenly dissipated, and clenched itself into a fist as if it had made a decision.

Hopping on its stump, the arm slowly approached the boy, and grabbed his neck, throttling him in leftover anger while the kid just dreamed sweet dreams, completely oblivious to the bruises the arm was leaving on him.

Shaking itself once more, this time in dejection, the hand grabbed the boy's arm, and the arm exerted surprising strength dragging the boy off the bed, and onto the floor.

An eye cracked open within the palm of the severed arm, and a milky white portal formed once again, this time shaky and much less stable than the one it's main body had opened at Stonehenge

Tossing the boy into the portal, and following behind it soon after, the hand wondered what new variables he had introduced into The Great Hunt once more.

Space and Time became meaningless as the portal lengthened and stretched the boy and the hand, and lifted the curtains to a new age, and the coming of a new God.

For who would have known that a mere accident and trap set up for an old one could herald the beginning of a legend that would be chanted between the aeons to come, and the universe beyond that.