Long before he was known as the Prophet of the Frost Echo, Caelys was a respected sorcerer from the frozen lands of the north. Fascinated by the mysteries hidden beneath the eternally snow-covered mountains, he devoted his life to studying the winds, the storms and the arcane properties of ancient ice. While other mages sought power through the Arcane Domains or the known entities, Caelys believed the oldest answers lay hidden in the frozen depths of the world.
It was during his expeditions that he first heard the whispers of the Valley of the Icy Whistle.
The people of the region said the wind carried voices. Laments. Fragments of conversations impossible to understand. Ancient stories told without rest by the endless blizzards. Many considered it superstition. Others believed they were spirits trapped in the ice. Caelys, however, saw something different.
He believed those voices were echoes preserved by the world itself.
But that discovery brought with it a disturbing question.
If those echoes had existed since time immemorial, who had imprisoned them there?
And why?
Obsessed with the chance of finding the answer, Caelys spent years developing runes able to trap entire currents of wind and fragments of storms. His goal was to capture the valley's echoes and study them directly, believing he would finally reveal a secret lost since the dawn of creation.
When the ritual was complete, however, nothing went as planned.
The runes did not capture the echoes.
They set them free.
Thousands of voices burst through the layers of ancient ice and tore through his mind in a single instant. Memories of vanished peoples, the last thoughts of forgotten kings, lost arcane secrets, the laments of extinct creatures and fragments of events so ancient they didn't even belong to recorded history.
The avalanche of minds should have destroyed him.
But it didn't.
It cursed him.
The echoes found a new vessel in Caelys.
From that day on, he was never alone again.
Every voice came to dwell in his mind. Every memory became part of his thoughts. Every lament found shelter in his soul. As the years passed, it became impossible to tell which memories were his own and which belonged to the countless minds imprisoned within him.
His personality began to fade slowly. Friends reported strange changes in his behavior. Sometimes he spoke like a sage from a forgotten age. Other times he used languages he had never studied. There were moments when he seemed to remember events that happened centuries before he was born.
Little by little, Caelys stopped being a man.
He became a multitude.
That was when the prophecies began.
The voices demanded to be heard. Hidden secrets were revealed through his lips. Kings received warnings of their downfall. Conjurers learned truths they should never have known. Many began to call him the Prophet, but few understood the reality.
Caelys no longer spoke for himself.
He was merely the instrument through which the echoes announced whatever they wished.
Today, the Prophet dwells in the Valley of the Icy Whistle, surrounded by the same blizzards that once condemned him. The winds still carry ancient voices, and those who come too close often return different from who they were before.
Some believe Caelys still exists somewhere within that mass of minds.
Others claim the man died long ago.
The truth is that no one knows for sure.
Not even Caelys himself.
To be continued...