Somewhere over the rough ocean waves, across the burned and blackened landscape of Atrata. Through the peachy pink and orange forests of the hinterlands. At the foot of the Farcaster peaks sits a small farmstead on a spring evening.
Inside the farmstead a human farmer by the name of Morgan is putting his children Sindy and Aaron to bed.
“Papa,” asks Sindy, “why did The Four have to die? Couldn’t they have just defeated Orcus and come home?”
Morgan settles into his chair with a sad smile. “Let me tell you about Xaverine the Light and the trick that saved the world.”
When The Four prepared for their final battle, they knew Orcus and his Wand of Death were too powerful to defeat with strength alone. They needed something clever.
Xaverine the Light, the elven wizard, spent months searching for an answer. She even ventured into the shadows to bargain with Kyoss, the merchant of secrets, trading something precious for forbidden knowledge about the planes.
She returned with a plan - not a weapon, but a trick. A way to send Orcus back to the Abyss, back to the hell from which he came.
On the day of battle, The Four fought their way into Orcus’s stronghold. Arrako the Pure’s blade sang. Cynric the Brave’s flames roared. Faben the Worthy’s arrows flew true. Xaverine’s magic danced like starlight.
But the Wand was too powerful. One by one, they fell to their knees, wounded and exhausted.
That’s when Xaverine looked at her friends and whispered, “It’s time.”
They understood. They’d always known what the trick would cost.
Xaverine’s hands wove patterns in the air, speaking words that made reality itself shudder. A point of brilliant light appeared above her, growing brighter and brighter.
“For the world,” she said.
The light exploded outward in a perfect sphere, expanding through the stronghold. Not the light of fire or lightning - the light of doorways opening. Where the sphere touched, reality tore.
The Four stood at the center, holding their ground as demons shrieked and fled. As stones cracked and walls crumbled. As Orcus himself roared in fury, trying to escape the pull.
The sphere reached the stronghold’s walls and stopped. Then, in one blinding flash, everything within vanished - demons, darkness, fortress, and heroes alike. All of it pulled through to the Abyss.
The scorched earth remained. But Orcus was gone. And so were The Four.
Morgan tucked his children into bed. “There were no bodies to bury, you know. The crater gave nothing back. Some bards will tell you the light took all four clean. Others say a crater that swallows a whole fortress keeps its own counsel, and the dead it does not show, it does not always have. Stories disagree. They always do.” “They could have run, you know. Could have escaped before the sphere completed. But someone had to stay at the center to hold it stable. Someone had to make sure Orcus couldn’t escape.”
He kissed their foreheads. “So be grateful, my loves. Every peaceful day you live is because four heroes chose to give everything. Never forget their sacrifice.”