Minor Prophecy
The Road of Three Bells
When the first bell is drowned, the road shall turn from stone to sorrow. When the second bell is buried, the dead shall remember their captains. When the third bell answers from below, wise folk will bar their doors and count the names of the living.
Source: unattributed roadside verse, repeated in altered forms along the Coast
Minor Prophecy
The Black Wing Over the River
A shadow with no breath shall cross the river at war-height. Where its wings pass, shields will ring, horses will scream, and holy stone will learn how deeply fear can stain.
Source: broken temple marginalia, author unknown
Public Prophecy
The Prophecy of the Black Confluence
Recorded in uncertain copies attributed to Alaundo’s later utterances, though several Candlekeep scribes dispute the attribution.
When the bell beneath the dragon’s bones is answered,
and the drowned stone drinks the breath of the slain,
then shall the Ebon Ascendant gather what war has wasted.
She shall not seek a throne of gold,
nor the praise of living kings.
Her kingdom shall be counted in opened graves,
her banners stitched from silence,
her census taken by the dead.
Along the Sword Coast, black hands shall raise old pylons.
Under sea, under soil, under shadow, they shall listen.
Each stone shall call to the next.
Each corpse shall answer before it is cold.
Beware the one who names death as order,
and calls the grave a ledger.
Beware the hand that would bind every fallen soul
to one will, one war, one final reckoning.
For when the Black Confluence is made whole,
the coast shall not fall in fire.
It shall stand,
and march.
Public note: This prophecy is known in fragments. Scholars disagree over its source, date, and reliability. Some versions name only “the Ebon Ascendant.” No accepted interpretation has yet explained what the Black Confluence is, though the language of graves, pylons, drowned stone, and bound dead has drawn renewed attention since the troubles on Dragon Isle.