His journey had begun in the clouds, riding the winds in search of a place remembered but no longer known. He’d found the place, as he’d found it before, by following the ancient glyphs an ancient folk had carved into the land, glyphs that had endured millennia of neglect and the cataclysmic finale of the Brothers’ War five years ago.
Much of Terisiare had vanished in the cataclysm, reduced to dust by fratricidal hatred. That dust still swirled overhead. Everyone coughed and harvests were sparse, but the sunsets and sunrises were magnificent luminous streaks of amber reaching across the sky, seeking escape from a ruined world.
The brothers in whose names the war had been fought had been reduced to curses: By Urza’s whim and Mishra’s might, may you rot forever beneath the forests of sunken Argoth.
Rumors said that Urza had caused the cataclysm when he used Lat Nam sorcery to fuel his final, most destructive, artifact. Others said that the cataclysm was Mishra’s curse as he died with Urza’s hands clasped around his throat. A few insisted that Urza had survived his crimes. Within a year of the cataclysm, all the rumors had merged in an increasingly common curse: If I met Urza on the road, I’d cripple him with my own two hands, as he and his brother crippled us, then I’d leave him for the rats and vultures as he left Mishra.
