Cold Obsidian (Obsidian Trilogy, #1)

Not a long time ago, just about two thousand years, in the North, between the Sumo Mountains and the place where Fervida meets Gileda there was a great city. It had a name back then: Erhaben. Now, that name is long forgotten and the remains of Erhaben are marked as “The City of Tricksters” on the maps. No one goes there for there is nothing to see among the overgrown ruins and ancient dust.

Malconemershghan was a genius and a dreamer. The citizens of Erhaben loved him so much they chose him to rule over them. He promised to lead his people into a great future, and he kept his word, working day and night to make his great dream come true.

He discovered the primal force with which Omnis had been created by the worldholders, the force that, unlike magic, needed no stabilizers, the force undisturbed by the anomalies of No Man’s Land. If anyone succeeded in mastering it, they would be able to move mountains with their will alone.

Malconemershghan dug deeper into that matter. He spoke of the primal world where the worldholders had come from, the world where every single person was their equal and the primal force of creation ran freely. That’s how his great dream was born, a dream of sharing the power of worldholders with the people of Omnis, a dream of the Golden Age.

The shining dream had blinded him. He could not even conceive the non-magical force to be dangerous but dangerous it was; so dangerous, in fact, that the worldholders themselves refused to use it. What used to be harmless in a newborn world full of primal chaos became deadly and destructive as the world matured and entered the realm of order and balance.

Malconemershghan refused to hear of it; his apprentices, inspired by their master’s dream, would not hear of the possible danger as well. Crazy poems were being chanted on every corner of the great city, disrupting the balance.

Sereg had come in time, almost in time to save the day... Omnis had survived, the order prevailed, but the balance remained unstable even five years after the fall of Erhaben. And when the charred ruins of the Tricksters’ city had been already overgrown with grass and the world seemed safe again, hordes of unimaginable, alien creatures flooded Omnis: the Stygian spiders, as people would call them later. It was no war, it was slaughter, a bloodbath. Who were these creatures? Where had they come from? Were they indeed alien invaders that came to prey on the weakened world? Were they the last creation of Malcon and his followers, blinded by hatred and revenge just as much as they used to be blinded by the golden dream? There is no answer still...