[ALTARUS:] Striking from the swift darkening sky, Angsaar's Arch-Wraith, which had been watching the battle with gleaming inhuman eyes, leaped to the attack and smote the King, engulfing him in its ebon wings and driving its steel-rending talons into his golden armour. And yet it was not the life of the Royal Scion of Hyperborea which the fiend sought to take on that fateful eve, but rather that which the King held tight in his gauntleted fist... the Crystal of Mera. Wrenching the glimmering antediluvian jewel from its keeper, the Arch-Wraith unfurled its leathern wings and soared into the deepening gloom with a cacophonous cackle of victory, leaving the King to roar his ire after the fleeing wraith.

And as the Arch-Wraith soared the night-winds on its return journey to its malign master, the Prime Crystal clutched in its bloodied claws, the King knew as he watched the Shrine of A’zura-Kai begin to glow with a great and ominous sidereal luminescence, that he had on that battle-fraught eve defeated one dreadful menace on the Field of Blood only to unleash an infinitely more terrifying foe.

The Dark Liege Of Chaos Is Unleashed...