The Thousand-Year Overlap III

Great Glacier—

This was a world frozen in eternal permafrost. Interwoven glaciers lay stacked like sheets of glass, forming a crystalline world. Year-round, biting winds swept snow and ice through the air like sharp, bone-piercing blades, carving deep scars into the smooth ice. Day after day, they shaped this land's rugged and bizarre terrain. Yet even in such a harsh and perilous environment, an outsider's

figure could still be seen. An old wizard in a silver robe was struggling through the snow. He held the Ivory Staff in one hand and pressed the other against his pointed wizard's hat, which looked ready to be blown away at any moment. His snow-white beard whipped wildly in the biting Ice Wind, and he trudged through the nearly knee-deep snow, one step deep and the next shallow. The staff in his hand was named 'tir,' meaning knowledge. The Buga people possessed

three keys leading to truth—knowledge, wisdom, and reason. Yet this divine artifact was currently being used as nothing more than a walking stick.

The old wizard advanced slowly along the valley, tiny as an ant. He crossed the blue ice and stopped when he reached an open stretch of ground.

This was a huge valley. Black rocks rose from beneath the snow, forming steep peaks all around it. Between the peaks, the wind and snow weakened considerably. The old wizard looked around. An artificial structure stood in the valley. It had originally been a tower floating in midair, somewhat like a beautiful obelisk. Entirely snow-white and hundreds of feet tall, it had long since

shattered and crashed into the valley. Part of its wreckage was buried beneath the snow, while its once mysteriously patterned surface had been sealed in ice. Clearly, it had not been damaged recently.

"The third." The old wizard