"Final log. Code Alpha-Omega. If you hear this, it's already too late for me, and perhaps for everything we know."
Sage Theron's voice, strained and hoarse, fought against the howling wind that seeped through the debris of his observatory. His fingers, calloused from years of study, trembled as he clutched the runic crystal recorder. Magic, which once flowed like water through the veins of Aethelgard—our Great Unified Nation—now stuttered. Spells vanished, mana twisted. But this cursed machine, a relic of our purest science, continued to capture every syllable.
"We thought we were ready. We thought we had mastered the laws. That our Lumenis, the jewel of Aethelgard, armed to the teeth with technology and magic, was impenetrable. We had withstood an attack from those things before. Small, yes, but it taught us to prepare. We reinforced the unstable magical barriers, activated automated defense systems, every floating watchtower ready to fire. But none of that matters now."
A rumble, so close that the structure groaned, made Theron cough up a mouthful of blood. He wiped it away with the back of his hand, his gaze lost in the ruins of his city. "Damn it. That was the East Dome. They're inside. By my ancestors, they're inside."
"I always read the fragments. Those ancient books, broken by wars not found in our annals, spoke of a balance. Of a solitary, nameless entity that sewed the wounds of reality. They called it One. A damned anomaly that appeared when chaos threatened to devour everything." Theron gritted his teeth, his voice trembling with visceral fear. "They said it was a silent guardian, a figure of judgment. But they were tales. Legends to scare children. Until today."
He dragged himself to a broken crystal screen, which still projected distorted images of the invasion ravaging Lumenis. "I saw it. Not in a mana-induced vision. I saw it with my own eyes, just a few hours ago."
The images flickered, showing an instant of chaos. An interdimensional rift opened over the heart of the capital, spewing forth a deformed beast, one of those unstable creatures that barely solidified in this reality. Just as the thing prepared to tear through the central district, something fell from the sky.
"It was like a meteorite, a shooting star that defied the laws of physics," Theron murmured, his eyes wide, reliving the terror. "It impacted that beast with a force that shook the very fabric of dimension. And from the crater... from that inferno of foul energy... One emerged. Diminished, weakened to the extreme. It could barely stand, its armor broken, the energy of its face flickering weakly."
"That impact... that confrontation, though brief, confirmed everything. The quakes shaking our dimension, the erratic instability of mana, the creatures that shouldn't exist... it all comes from that battle. The one he fought, and the one that left him so compromised."
Theron hunched over, a pathetic but transcendent figure amidst the destruction. "I spoke with him. Or rather, he spoke to me without words. It was something... so impactful that it opened my mind, that it made me see what I refused to see. What our science and magic, with all their magnificence, couldn't fully comprehend."
"Our knowledge of other dimensions and multiverses is scarce. They are just theories, half-baked investigations. We know of our neighboring galaxies, of our own space, but what lies beyond... is an incomprehensible void. And now... now it's spilling over us."
A shapeless creature, born from a newly opened crack in the ground, crawled towards the sage's chamber. Theron looked at it, abysmal fear in his eyes, but also a strange resignation. "If he, One, the Sentinel, could be so diminished by Volgrath, the Dimensional Devourer... then we are more alone than we ever imagined."
The recorder's crystal vibrated in his hand, its light dim. "This message... I am programming it to transmit to every world, every planet, every corner of this dimension. If there's anyone out there... anyone who hasn't fallen yet... I beg you. Balance must be preserved. Seek out the Sentinel. And seek out The Last. In his soul, we detect records that don't belong to this life, echoes of something ancient. I don't know what it means, but he... he is the missing piece, that which can awaken. And prepare yourselves. Because the horror... is real."
Suddenly, a gigantic shadow loomed over the sage. The creature that had crawled from the rift now filled the entire opening, its mutant face twisting into a mass of eyes and jaws. It was centimeters from Theron.
A drier bang than any energy explosion resonated in the room. The recording went wild, the audio distorting with a dull crackle. The creature, which a moment before was about to devour the sage, stopped. Its shapeless mass tore, one of its mutant faces dissolving into a sludge of interdimensional essence, as if it had been struck with the force of a meteor. Theron, motionless, observed the disaster.
The recorder gave one last flicker. In the final fragment of the image, a blurry silhouette rose behind the beast, a human form barely visible, before the crystal shattered into a thousand pieces. The message, the last will of a sage, faded, but its silent wave of desperation and warning was already beginning to propagate through the cosmic void of his dimension.