They called it the Age of Radiance — the age that began when the shadows died.
At least, that was what the Celestian Church taught.
No mortal remembered the truth. No record bore his name. The gods had scrubbed Arthur Virelith from existence as if he had never drawn breath, never wielded a blade that could split the firmament.
The world that followed was not brighter for his absence — only quieter.
In the centuries after the Eclipse, the divine pantheon descended to mortal worship. They built temples of light and marble, declaring themselves saviors of mankind. They taught that a "Nameless Heretic" had once sought to devour creation in endless night, and that the Twelve had sacrificed their unity to save the world.
The mortals believed them.Faith replaced truth, and in time, the lie became law.
Magic, once fluid and boundless, withered into formulas and sigils. The world's energy — mana — grew thin, rationed like a resource rather than embraced as life. What was once art became arithmetic. What was once divine became doctrine.
Swordsmanship, too, decayed. The era of gods and blades gave way to drills and patterns — knights trained for show, not war. They called themselves masters, but not one among them could sense the rhythm of the world that Arthur once moved with.
The art he had forged — the union of shadow and sword — was lost entirely. They called it myth.
And so, as centuries turned to millennia, the Age of Radiance began to dim.
The gods, now worshiped as eternal rulers, grew distant. Temples grew rich, empires rose and fell, and prayers echoed unanswered. The divine flame that once illuminated the world now served only to cast longer shadows.
And somewhere, far below the heavens, those shadows stirred.
In the fifth millennium, an empire named Elarion stood as the last great power on the continent of Aetherion. Its banners bore the mark of the sun — a reminder of divine favor. Yet famine gnawed at its borders, nobles schemed for hollow prestige, and faith had become a business of coin and spectacle.
At the heart of it all, the Church of Celestia proclaimed:
"Only the light endures. Shadows are sin. Those who embrace the dark walk the path of the Heretic."
And in the depths of their archives, sealed beneath ten layers of divine decree, lay a single forbidden scroll — so old its ink had turned to dust.
Its title, erased.Its words, faint.But one line endured, scratched in a hand that refused to fade:
"When the moon eclipses the sun, the Shadow Sovereign shall rise again."
That night, as the empire slept beneath a silver sky, the moon began to dim.
Priests looked up in awe. Scholars whispered of omens. The Church dismissed it as illusion.
But in a distant manor of the noble Dravenhart line, a child drew his first breath — and with it, the candles in the room flickered out, snuffed by an unseen wind.
His mother trembled. His father recoiled.For in the infant's eyes, before they turned the gray of mortals, there glimmered briefly — a trace of silver light.
The same hue the gods had once feared.