It had been eons since Xeras had last looked upon this world, it had been purged of life during the War in Heaven. He had led his army to numerous victories and slain countless foes while in the service of the C'tan; but now he no longer knew the name of the world of which he slumbers in nor his priorities prior to the great sleep, as some of his systems had been damaged by the extended hibernation. He only remembers fragments of his former life and of his freedom from the slavery of his former gods by the Silent King Szarekh. For Eons he has slumbered, but now this world is teeming with life; with those that bend the very elements of nature to their will. Massive and strange hybrid creatures inhabit its landscapes with great ethereal beings that meddle in the lives of mortals. Maybe he shall resume his people's campaign of genocide, or maybe he will choose his own path only time can tell.

A small mining town in a remote northern region of the Earth Kingdom

It was a normal day of mining and industrial life for Kai, he'd moved here four months ago to gain employment in the mineral rich mining plant to help send money home to support his family. He had just began working on a new deposit of minerals that promised to cause profits to increase considerably.

The summer sun shone brightly in the sky beating down on all of them with its unyielding heat causing many to take cover in what little shade they could find whenever the opportunity presented itself; yet their work continued on. The security detail arranged for some of the water benders to distribute water amongst the workers to hold off exhaustion.

He took a chance to take shelter beneath the shade given off by a nearby tree to open his personal pouch to take a look at his journal; as well as begin writing another letter to his relatives back home. He always thought about his little sister Maia playing in the garden while his father would be working In the forge, crafting new weapons for the local garrison as well as crafting new furniture for the family using lumber from a nearby forest. His mother would be picking berries and tending her personal garden when she wasn't working in her small clinic she'd established for the sick and the wounded.

His thoughts were interrupted when he noticed a small commotion a few meters away, as a crowd of guards as well as other miners had formed a sizable perimeter around one of the dig sites. He decided to investigate himself, putting his journal and half-finished letter back into his pouch; taking a quick drink from his canteen, he promptly rushed over to see what the commotion was all about.

The scene was one of amazement, confusion, and fear, all rolled into one as there was a large metal object curled up holding what seemed to be some sort of spear and wearing some sort of mask over its face. The being was black as the darkest, starless night, it had no skin to speak of, its "body" seemed to resemble a human skeleton; but instead of bone there was only cold hard metal. It had been thought to be a new rare sort of mineral deposit when it was first spotted as a black object underground until it had been unearthed; now the crowd just stands in awe of the unknown being.

With the innate fear of the unknown, quickly people began spouting their explanations for the sudden appearance of this being; one man claimed it was obviously the discarded mortal body of an evil spirit that it used to terrorize the mortal realm since it could not physically interact with their plane of existence. He proclaimed that the spirit would return to wreak havoc and surely destroy them all if the body wasn't destroyed before it returned. A woman stated it was a man whose soul had been ripped out of him and put into a skeletal body as punishment for desecrating its shrine, doomed to be a heartless monstrosity that would never again know emotion nor physical feelings and senses.

The guards quickly tried to take control of the scene, quarantining off the area while sending a rider to deliver a message to a nearby governor for aid. Nobody knew what to do, none of them had been trained or even expected such a situation to arise; they were there to keep the workers in the line while protecting the facility from raids; not trying to identify some underground creature they'd accidently dug up.

It was obvious that fear was beginning to grip the workers, as well as several of the guards; it was only a matter of time before panic ensued causing chaos to spread; it was a short fuse that only awaited to be ignited by the smallest spark. A worker was arguing with a guard about what the object was and what they planned to do about it, the safety of everyone at the facility was in jeopardy. It was clear that order was close to breaking down and things would take a turn for the worst if this kept up. The chief of security arrived on the scene and decided to take control of the situation before things got out of hand.

"Listen everyone! Just head back to your stations and get back to work, we'll handle this." He proceeded to walk over to the metallic object and cautiously grabbed it to haul it off site for further investigation; he had no idea what he had just awoken.

At the touch of an outside force, old systems began to once again revitalize; ancient protocols that had once been dormant quickly activated themselves and began the process of resurrection. Xeras had long slumbered beneath the once desolate earth, for eons he had waited patiently for the time of his return. With his body bringing itself to full operational status; he knew His eon's long slumber had finally ended; the age of the great sleep was over, the time of awakening had come.