Long before his name was tied to the dead, to lost souls and to forbidden secrets, Maelzhar was known as one of the most brilliant researchers in the Kingdom of Arcus.
Learned, dedicated and consumed by an insatiable curiosity, he spent much of his life studying the mysteries of Anima, the forgotten fragments of creation and the hidden regions beyond the Prismatic Veil. While other mages sought to perfect spells or win prestige in the arcane courts, Maelzhar chased questions few dared to ask.
What lay beyond death?
Where did souls flow when they left their bodies?
And what truths remained hidden in the abysses that separated the worlds?
Driven by these doubts, he left the comforts of Arcus behind and set out on a journey that would take him past the known limits of reality. Fragmented records say Maelzhar crossed forgotten ruins, unstable portals and regions where Anima itself seemed corrupted. Some claim he vanished for years. Others believe it was decades.
When he finally returned, he brought back only one artifact.
A book.
Ancient, with no known title, bound in black chains and symbols that belonged to no mortal language.
Maelzhar called it the Codex of Profanation.
No one knows for sure where the book came from. Some believe it was found in the depths of the Abyss. Others swear the tome found him first.
At first, the Codex seemed to be just a collection of forgotten knowledge. Its pages held impossible rituals, accounts of ancient entities and observations on the nature of souls that contradicted centuries of arcane study.
But with each reading, something changed.
His colleagues noticed first.
The nights grew longer.
The answers vaguer.
The silences more frequent.
Maelzhar began talking to himself in unknown languages and recording observations about places that existed on no map. His studies stopped following the logic of the sages of Arcus and began to obey patterns only he understood.
Or perhaps only the book did.
As the years went by, the line between knowledge and obsession disappeared. His mind grew ever murkier, his actions more unpredictable, and his sense of reality began to dissolve like mist before the dawn.
Even so, he kept reading.
Kept learning.
Kept listening.
For in the pages of the Codex lay answers no mortal had ever found.
And, for Maelzhar, that was enough.
The scholars of Arcus record that it was in this period that he abandoned the paths of conventional magic for good. His experiments came to involve fragmented souls, echoes of forgotten memories and forces that should never be touched by mortal hands.
Little by little, the researcher disappeared.
In his place, only Maelzhar remained.
A man willing to cross any limit, defy any truth and sacrifice any certainty in pursuit of the hidden knowledge beyond creation.
For after opening the Codex of Profanation, his research stopped looking for answers.
They began to look for what should never be discovered.
To be continued...