Entry 2866: Field Journal of Höbin Luckyfeller
Personal Entry — On the Matter of Mahan
I know my research ended with my publication, and my citizenship forfeited over that project…but there’s a question that continues to trouble me.
Not the question most historians argue about — how Mahan was defeated.
No.
The question that keeps me awake at night is far simpler.
Where is he now?
The official histories are quite proud of themselves. Each race claims some glorious role in the defeat of the Dark Lord.
Utter nonsense, of course.
But all of these stories share one uncomfortable truth.
None of them actually say Mahan died.
They say he was bound.
They say he was cast away.
They say he was banished beyond the Prime Gate.
But death?
No.
That word is strangely absent.
When records disagree, a historian looks for patterns. And the pattern surrounding Mahan is… troubling.
Every credible account confirms the same thing:
He was imprisoned by a device known as the Demoni Vankil — the Devil’s Prison.
Runes burned into bone. Magic binding tongue and body. A prison tied not to stone… but to Unrest itself. If one cannot kill a devil…send him somewhere worse.
But that forced me to investigate what ‘Unrest’ was. I’d not considered that simple fact, even as it stared me in the face.
Stupid, stupid old fool of a gnome…
This last season drove me mad, striving to find references of this location. Nothing in the FAF database. Nothing in the Royal Archives in Andilain. Not even the lore masters of the Kutollum had any reference in their vast tomes of knowledge.
But the Evolu…
If I’m right, Unrest was part of their continent. Their kingdom. Which made all this more disturbing still. Their records have scattered hints of a location called ‘Unrest’, a valley under the stewardship of a military lord. A place where the elite soldiers of the evolu army trained to fight against the horde.
Why would Mahan be banished to Evolu lands?
That pulled my mind to prisons…
Prisons have a habit of failing.
Walls crumble.
Locks rust.
Guards grow careless.
And time…that patient destroyer …eventually weakens everything.
Even magic.
The Demoni Vankil was never meant to last forever.
Eamon himself suspected as much.
He wrote, quite plainly:
“Darkness will return… and Mahan will return, though it be by another name.”
That sentence alone should trouble anyone who reads it carefully. Because Eamon was not a fool. He was the man who built the prison.
During my travels I have collected… oddities.
Patterns. Stories whispered in taverns. Records quietly removed from archives. Certain symbols appearing where they should not.
And once…only once…I encountered something far worse.
A rune mark.
Burned into bone.
Not identical to the ones described in the accounts of the Demoni Vankil. But close enough that I did not sleep for three nights.
I will not disclose where I saw it.
Not yet.
Most people believe the story ended.
The Dark Lord defeated.
The war won.
History closed.
Historians know better. At least the smart ones, anyway.
History never closes.
It waits.
And if Eamon was right…
the prison that holds Mahan is not eternal.
It is merely delayed.
My personal prediction is that one day…and I’m afraid it will be one day too soon…someone will make a terrible discovery.
A rune broken. A seal disturbed. A gate reopened.
And when that happens…the world will learn something very important.
Mahan was never gone.
He was waiting.
— Höbin Luckyfeller
Field Scribe Historian
Chronicles of a Hero
