Umbra, the Monarch of Shadow, had fallen. His corruption—a mix of Shadow and Ren's Chaos Qi—bled into the earth.
The Seal of the Ancestor was no longer airtight. It was cracking.
From the cracks, a grey mist began to seep out. It was not the Grey Fog of creation; it was the fog of stagnation. When the mist touched a wolf, the wolf stopped aging, but its flesh continued to grow. It became a cancer-beast, a writhing mound of immortal tumors. When the mist touched a forest, the trees turned to stone, trapping the birds inside.
Ren was awake beneath the earth. He was hungry. His hunger was not for food. It was for Time. He began to drink the seasons. Spring never came. Winter lasted for ten years. The world was trapped in a cold, grey stasis.