He had been waiting for this moment for a long time.
Not years. Not decades. Centuries, perhaps, though time had lost its meaning in the place where he had been bound. The Skylords had put him here, in the space between worlds, in the silence between heartbeats, in the place where the Aethyr flowed like water and the darkness was so complete that even the memory of light had begun to fade.
But he had not forgotten. He would never forget.
They had called him Corvus, once. The Shard-Tongue. The Prophet of Broken Things. He had been one of them, in the beginning, before he saw the truth of what they were. Before he tried to warn the mortals of the chains they were forging for themselves. Before Thalrik had torn out his tongue and thrown him into the darkness and told him that he would stay there until the world ended.
But the world had not ended. And Corvus had waited.
He felt it when Kaelen's pact shattered, a ripple in the Aethyr that sent shivers through the darkness. He felt it when the Hounds were loosed, when the first blood was spilled in the wastes, when the boy was born and the father began to remember what it meant to love.
And he felt it now, the warmth of the Echo, pulsing in the darkness like a heartbeat, calling to him, telling him that the time was coming.
"The Shattered Oath," he whispered, and his voice was a rustle of feathers, a crack of stone, a whisper of something that had not been used in a very long time. "You have chosen well. Better than I hoped. Better than I expected."
He moved through the darkness, his body shifting, changing, becoming something that could exist in the space between worlds. He was not free—the Skylords had made sure of that—but he was not bound, either. Not anymore. The cracks in their prison had been growing for a thousand years, and Kaelen's rage had widened them.
"Soon," he said, and his voice was a song, a scream, a prayer. "Soon, you will come to me. Soon, you will need what I can give. And when you do, I will show you the truth that they have been hiding from you. The truth that will set you free."
He reached out, and in his hand was a shard of darkness, a piece of the place where he had been bound. It was cold, colder than the wastes, colder than the Frostfangs, colder than anything that had ever existed in the world of light.
And it was waiting.
"The Hollow Forge," he said. "The third piece. You think it is a weapon. You think it is a key. But it is so much more than that. It is a door. A door to the place where the Skylords were born. A door to the thing that waits in the darkness. A door to the truth that will break you or make you into something new."
He closed his hand, and the shard of darkness dissolved, flowing into the cracks in his prison, widening them, weakening them.
"I will be waiting, Kaelen. I will be waiting at the end of your road. And when you come to me, I will show you what you truly are. What you have always been. What you were always meant to become."
He smiled, and in the darkness, something that had been sleeping for a thousand years began to stir.
The cycle was beginning.
And nothing would ever be the same.