“When gods bleed, the sky remembers.” — Vaesian proverb
Long before ruin, before silence, before the great sundering, Saragossa was a world in tune with the divine. The gods walked its winds, whispered through stone, shimmered in moonlight. Their temples towered over cities, their blessings carved into every harvest, every birth, every breath of magic.
When the gods turned against one another, driven by clashing visions of fate and power, they did not begin as factions — they became them out of necessity. Each god still held their own convictions, their own designs for the world’s fate, but as the heavens spiraled into chaos, they saw no choice but to band together. It was not unity of vision, but survival of intent.
As the first divine blows fell and the heavens shuddered, ancient disagreements hardened into banners. Gods who had long debated the purpose of creation, the worth of mortals, and the role of divine intervention finally chose sides.
The Luminous Accord was born of those who sought to preserve the existing divine cycle — gods of memory, restoration, justice, and balance. They did not all agree on how the world should be governed, but they feared what might come if the ancient order was torn apart.
The Shadowed Enclave coalesced from gods who believed the world must change — that the divine stagnated and the old laws chained progress. They were not evil, nor unified in desire, but they shared a hunger to reshape reality, even if it meant reaching for powers buried deep in the foundations of existence.
These alliances were not built on peace. They were carved in desperation — in fire, blood, and silence.
They coexisted in tension — balanced, wary. It was said even their wars were written in the stars, predictable, orbiting in sacred cycles. But nothing divine lasts forever.
It began not with war horns or celestial trumpets, but with a shiver in the firmament.
One dusk, across the breadth of Saragossa, the stars blinked out — not all at once, but in slow succession, like the sky forgetting its own name. In the mountain temples of Zahid’s Reach, the high seers screamed and tore at their eyes. In the northern spires of Vaes, priests watched the constellations stutter, twist, and collapse into unreadable chaos. And in Russadir, where scholars once mapped the heavens from atop glass towers, the sky turned red and their instruments cracked, as if the firmament itself rejected observation.
And then Seravelle vanished. The goddess of the Celestial Wheel, she who had traced the sky with her breath since time’s cradle, simply… disappeared. Her oracles fell mute. Her altars froze over. Her sacred wheel, etched in the sky for all time, fractured like broken glass across the heavens.
Some say she foresaw what was coming and fled. Others believe she was the first casualty — not in body, but in soul. One legend speaks of a moment when Seravelle, peering too far beyond the veil of fate, glimpsed a truth not even the gods were meant to know. It did not break her — it silenced her.
A few among the Hollow Codex — a scattered sect of archivists and exiles who claim to guard the truths left behind by the divine — whisper that she spoke a single word before vanishing, and that word was burned into the fabric of the stars themselves. No one has dared to read it.
Whether her absence was flight, sacrifice, or exile, none can say. But when Seravelle fell silent, so too did the sky.
In the silence that followed, a thousand interpretations were whispered — a prophecy lost, a betrayal foretold, a truth too dangerous to know. But one belief took root, spreading like wildfire among pantheons and prophets alike:
The sky itself had been betrayed.
And the gods, once watchful, turned their fury inward.
Thus it was, as the final echoes of Seravelle’s breath faded from the sky, that the first divine blow was struck—not by blade or flame, but by the severing of purpose itself.
In the void where prophecy once sang, distrust bloomed like rot. The gods, each burdened by visions and pride, clashed not for land or loyalty, but for dominion over the truth—what it meant to be divine, what it meant to protect or transform, to obey or to evolve.
Some fought to uphold the ancient cycles, fearing what might be lost. Others sought to rewrite fate altogether, unearthing forgotten powers that predated even the stars.
The heavens ignited. Not as battlefield, but as battleground of ideals.
The Cataclysm did not arrive with declaration. It unfolded, like a myth scrawled in fire across the firmament.
And so began the war that scarred the sky.
It was not war as mortals know it. It was the sky cracking like bone, the stars weeping flame, the very breath of existence curling into ash.
The Cataclysm didn’t just begin — it arrived, crashing through the heavens like a divine scream made flesh.
Constellations collided, spiraling into one another in slow, cosmic agony. Stars plummeted, blazing arcs of divine fury that birthed horrors where they struck. Leylines frayed and snapped, loosing wild magic that burned forests, cities, memories.
The Luminous Accord struck with light not meant to illuminate — but to blind, to cauterize, to purge. Their justice sang in radiant hymns that shattered stone and soul alike. Healing light turned to razors, and cities caught in its path were flensed to bone and silence. In Zahid’s Reach, sandstone spires exploded into glass, and the sun did not rise for seven days.
The Shadowed Enclave answered in nightmares. Tempests howled with the secrets mortals were never meant to know. Smoke-beasts slithered from vaults of forgotten guilt, devouring memory. In the deep jungles of the Verdant Coil, the very roots recoiled from the sky’s madness — entire canopies collapsing as time faltered and sap turned to ink.
And with the fall of divine harmony came sickness. Not of the flesh alone, but of the spirit. Cities once untouched by plague found themselves stricken overnight. Blight spread through crops as if whispered into the soil. Infants were born with ancient eyes. The Scourge of Tharanis blackened the blood of kings. In the Mirelands, people coughed up starlight and shadows. Madness bloomed faster than any fever — and whole regions learned to fear the dawn more than the dark.
In the oceans, tides reversed, dragging ships into the sky. The seas near Russadir boiled with celestial venom, turning fish translucent and birthing things with too many eyes. Magic no longer obeyed, and in some places — like the scarred plateaus of Al’Zarim — gravity itself forgot which way was down.
And in the midst of that celestial unmaking, the divine began to fall.
Names were lost in the roar of unraveling heavens. Some gods were consumed in light too pure to bear. Others were drawn into the waking world and torn apart by the very truths they once concealed. Some simply vanished — their domains left hollow, their worshippers left mad or mute.
Where once temples thrived, now only ashes and whispering shadows remain. In the deepest night, mortals claim to hear names in the wind — but whether they are the prayers of the faithful or the echoes of broken divinity, none can say.
Those who remained were not whole. Gods do not bleed, they say. But Saragossa would learn: they do break.
The Celestial Cataclysm did not end with triumph — it ended with collapse. The gods, drained and diminished, turned from the mortal world, leaving behind a land shivering with divine aftershocks.
Continents fractured like old bone. Oceans swallowed cities as if avenging forgotten sins. The sun vanished for years in some regions, and when it returned, it cast no warmth. Rain became ash. Storms sang in voices not heard since creation. Magic, once a breath of the divine, turned volatile, unrecognizable, and hungry.
Where divine power struck the ground, the world writhed. Forests grew in reverse, their canopies curling inward, as though time recoiled in fear. Mountains bled from their cores, their molten sorrow trickling through fractured stone. Rivers whispered secrets in voices not heard since the world’s making — and those who listened too closely were never the same. The very skin of Saragossa rippled with pain, as if the land itself mourned what had been lost.
And then came the sickness. Blights that killed soil. Fevers that boiled thought. Children were born with eyes like star-shards. The Scourge of Tharanis twisted bloodlines into shadows of themselves. In the Mirelands, coughing up light became a death sentence. Faith became madness. The sick prayed not for healing, but for the strength to forget.
Among the survivors, some who had brushed too near divine essence warped into something inhuman — luminous or hollow, barely contained by flesh. Cults sprouted like rot in the vacuum of godhood. Most were desperate. Some were deceived. A few were answered.
In Vaes, the City of Ember Moons, the stars are no longer read for guidance, but for warnings. Their patterns speak of scars, not destinies. The once-golden observatories now glow faint blue, casting ghostlight over streets emptied by fear. Nightly vigils continue, though few believe in answers — only in omens.
In Basq, on the jagged isle of Viper’s Nest, serpentine rulers consult relics of the Accord, whispering to fragments of gods like broken bones. Their dreams are salt-heavy and sweet with prophecy, but none speak of peace. Instead, tides speak in voices that echo from drowned altars.
The Pale Kingdom lies still. Its deathless monarch reigns in silence, his throne pulsing with marrow-deep power. His people do not age, do not tire, do not rejoice. Their pacts linger like mist — thick and suffocating. They remember the Cataclysm not as event, but as origin.
At the foot of the Tembok Baitang, pilgrims weave murals of flame and darkness into silks that shimmer unnaturally. The oldest among them have sewn until their eyes bled, claiming they see what the stars once told — truths too vivid, too sacred, to survive daylight.
In Russadir, where once the heavens were charted with divine precision, the towers groan with strange energy. Glass domes flicker with half-formed constellations. Scholars debate whether they are the last words of gods — or the first dreams of something worse.
And high above, in the mountains of Asoris, lightning strikes without storm. Thunder speaks, and those who climb to hear return hollow-eyed and trembling. The language of storms does not belong to mortals. But it remembers us.
Even in Zahid’s Reach, where the sun still obeys its arc, priests walk their ritual circuits with lips sewn shut. Not in penance, but in reverence — for silence is safer than invocation.
For the gods do not answer.
Or worse — they do.
They speak in dreams.
And those dreams are waking.
Yet as the silence settles into the bones of history, the world claws its way forward — not with hope, but with desperation. Survivors rebuild not for legacy, but for shelter. Tomes are opened not for wisdom, but for warnings. Trade stirs not from trust, but necessity. The world endures, not because it is healing, but because it refuses to die. Survivors turn rubble into homes. Forgotten tomes are dusted open. Trade caravans cautiously cross once-blighted lands. The songs are different now — quieter, yes, but sung nonetheless.
They call it the Era of Silence and Splinters — not from decree, but from the way it slips through whispered prayers and fractured maps, a name born in broken tongues and quiet desperation. Silence, because the gods no longer walk the world as they once did. Splinters, because from the wreckage of divine order, new ideas, cults, nations, and powers rise — jagged and untested.
It is not a golden age. It is an age of surviving. Power has splintered into isolated dominions, and diplomacy, once guided by divine consensus, lies in ruin. Borders are guarded not just by armies, but by paranoia. What was once a continent of united belief now festers in shadowed pockets of suspicion. This is the dawn of a dark age — the beginning of the Era of Silence and Splinters.
And Saragossa, broken and beautiful, is still listening — though it has never truly forgotten the sky’s betrayal.
Some even say one still walks who remembers.
No one agrees on their name. Some call them the Pilgrim of Ash. Others, the Last Witness. Their presence is whispered across regions like drifting smoke — said to appear where the old wounds bleed deepest, and vanish before the wind can speak their arrival. Cloaked in storm-scorched robes and crowned with a circlet of ruined glyphs, they have been seen in every corner of the Saragossa, they were said to whisper to the dead stars. In Russadir, they drank ink from shattered tomes. In the Pale Kingdom, they knelt at a throne that does not pulse, and wept.
They do not speak of the Cataclysm. They do not age. But those who meet their gaze dream of a sky that bled, and wake with names on their lips — names no living person should remember.
Perhaps they were once mortal. Perhaps they were once divine.
But all who survive in Saragossa know one truth:
Whoever they are, they remember everything.