Before the age of mortals, before
kingdoms rose from stone and soil, there was only Kelyndor—the realm of the
divine.
A place sculpted from concept and
dream, where gods walked in forms too radiant or terrible for mortal comprehension.
But even paradise can fracture.
And divinity, once cracked, spreads
ruin like wildfire.
The sky of Kelyndor trembled as a rift
tore open across its horizon, spilling black-gold lightning that split the firmament. Divine fortresses—vast citadels carved from starlight—shattered like fragile crystal under the force of the rebellion.
At the center of that rebellion stood
Zerathul, the Hollow King.
Once a god of dominion and noble
pride, he now wore a cracked golden mask, hiding the hollowed ruin of his face.
His voice rang like a crown breaking.
"Order binds us. Balance chains us.
Creation belongs to those willing to seize it."
At his side marched those who had
forsaken the old laws:
Maelira, the Grey Bride, her eyeless visage drifting with ashen hair, whispering corruption that ate through divine shields like rot.
Tharos the Shattered, his skin glowing with molten fury, each step cracking the ground beneath him.
Eryndas, the Scribe of Rot, dragging behind him scrolls woven from the skins of dead ideas, script writhing like living worms. Naethor, the Unbound Flame, a burned god with a flame in his chest that consumed instead of illuminated.
Five gods—once pillars of creation—now
twisted by power's darkest temptations.
They sought to tear down Kelyndor, unmake the structure of reality, and rebuild the cosmos as they desired. And for a moment, it seemed they might succeed.
The loyal gods rallied at the Court of
Dawns, the highest point in Kelyndor where all creation had once been sung into existence. The very air vibrated with the ancient harmonies of birth and order.
Light clashed against shadow.
Creation waged war with corruption.
The ground ran with divine ichor—radiant gold and abyssal black—each drop birthing new realities or extinguishing them entirely.
Zerathul carved through the defensive
host, draining color and vitality wherever he walked. Maelira's whispers drove demi-gods to madness. Tharos shattered mountains of pure mana. Eryndas rewrote sigils mid-battle, unraveling spells as they were cast. Naethor sent waves of consuming flame that devoured even celestial flesh.
But the loyal gods fought with
desperation born of love—for the world below, still unformed but full of promise.
At the peak of the battle, the eldest
of the loyal deities raised the celestial artifact known as the Worldseal—a sphere of woven creation and pure law.
With it, they did the unthinkable.
They struck down their own kin.
Not to kill—for divinity cannot die—but to cast them out, wrenching their divine essence from Kelyndor and sealing them in a distant corner of the mortal world below.
Their prison was a remote, uninhabited
continent that, in time, would be known as Ostren.
As they were banished, Zerathul's roar
shook the bones of reality itself.
"You have not won. Order collapses.
Balance shatters.
One day, all shall drown in the
Blight!"
His voice became prophecy.
When the Fallen Gods struck the mortal
realm, the impact reshaped the land. Mountains split. Mana screamed. Forests
withered, rebloomed, mutated.
The gods' essence seeped into earth
and air like poisoned smoke.
Slowly, inexorably, it spread.
What was once The Far Dawn, the cradle
of early humanity, became a land of shadow and sickness. Mana twisted into
strange, unnatural flows. Creatures warped. Souls bent.
This was the beginning of the Blight.
A corruption that breathed, hunted,
and remembered.
A corruption that desired more.
For though sealed away, the Fallen
Gods were not idle.
From deep within Ostren, their
influence grew—whisper by whisper, shadow by shadow—bending mortals into zealots, reshaping champions into monstrous Hands, and forging an army with a
single purpose:
To break the Worldseal. To unmake
Vaelora.
To march on Kelyndor once more.
For to become the only gods, the world itself must first die