The Ancient past

The following is a high-level overview of the past and present history of *The Shadow of What Was Lost*, taken directly from the first few pages of *The Light of All That Falls*.

More than four thousand years ago, the wedding of Tal'kamar Deshrel ended with Elliavia, his new wife, being brutally and senselessly slain. Mad with grief, Tal'kamar drew for the first time on a dark power called kan, killing all those in attendance as he took their life force—their Essence—in a vain attempt to bring her back to life.

Burdened with sorrow and guilt over both Elliavia's death and his own actions, Tal'kamar soon found that he was unable to die: even when beheaded, he would simply wake up again in a different body and a different land. Worse, he eventually discovered that not only had he failed to save Elliavia, he had inadvertently allowed a creature from the Darklands—a place of unimaginable pain and suffering—to enter the world through her body. This creature was a shape-shifter named Nethgalla; having retained Elliavia's memories, she began pursuing Tal'kamar in an obsessive attempt to be with him once again.

Rejecting Nethgalla, Tal'kamar traveled for hundreds of years, eventually meeting other people who, like himself, could not die. One in particular, Gassandrid, claimed that their long-lived nature was a gift from El, the god who had created the world—but that contrary to most people's beliefs, El was currently imprisoned within the bounds of time, and it was in fact the great enemy Shammaeloth who had set into motion the inevitable chain of events that now shaped the world.

Gassandrid went on to explain that their immortality was an attempt by El to change the course of these events, using the last of His power to bend the path upon which Shammaeloth had set fate. Gassandrid also asserted that if they were able to change things enough, they would ultimately be able to go back in time, undoing all that had been done under Shammaeloth's rule and living in a world where true choice was possible.

As proof of his claims, Gassandrid provided Tal'kamar with detailed visions of the future: evidence of the predestined nature of the world, and therefore the invisible chains in which each and every person was enslaved.

Tal'kamar, eventually convinced by his inability to change the events that had been foreseen, became the final immortal to join the group who would become known as the Venerate. This group consisted of eleven men and women: Tal'kamar, Gassandrid, Alaris, Andrael, Wereth, Tysis, Asar, Meldier, Isiliar, Diara, and Cyr.

The Venerate worked together for hundreds of years, using the visions El provided them to enact justice and do great good in the world. After a time, though, their work became increasingly focused on what El said was necessary to bend fate toward their goal, finally culminating in Tal'kamar being asked by El to destroy the legendary city of Dareci. Though this act would kill millions of people, El assured Tal'kamar that it was an awful but necessary step toward freeing the world—one that would force the Darecians to flee to Andarra and begin working on the time-travel device known as the Jha'vett.

Tal'kamar, sickened but choosing to believe that everything he did would ultimately be undone, agreed. He changed his name to Aarkein Devaed and followed El's instructions to create the Columns, a weapon that ultimately leveled Dareci and killed everyone living there.

This horrific act split the Venerate, many of them refusing to believe that El had truly asked Tal'kamar to perform it.

Hundreds of years passed as the Darecians, despite their incredibly advanced weaponry, were slowly driven from the Shining Lands. Many of the Venerate returned to assist Tal'kamar, finally accepting that he had been acting at El's behest. However, Andrael in particular remained unconvinced, having suspected even before Dareci's destruction that the "El" the Venerate were serving had been lying all along—and was quite possibly Shammaeloth himself.

As Andrael continued to research the consequences of what El was trying to achieve, he came to believe that it was the Venerate's unnatural ability to manipulate kan that was at the root of the Darklands' connection to their own world—a cause, as well as an effect, of the rift between realities. He eventually concluded that if that breach was widened by the Darecians as El wished, it could pose an extraordinary danger: one which, should El then be allowed to reach it, could potentially unleash the full misery of the Darklands upon the world.

Determining that the only solution was to close the rift entirely—and that the only way to do so was to eliminate the aberrant connections to the Darklands that were holding it open—Andrael reluctantly set about creating a weapon that could kill the Venerate.

To this end, he finally succeeded in making the blade Licanius.

Despite Andrael's warnings and the new threat that Licanius posed, the remaining Venerate continued to follow El's instructions to push the Darecians to Andarra; there, the surviving descendants of Tal'kamar's near genocide created Deilannis, a great city with the Jha'vett at its heart.

Tal'kamar, upon hearing that the Jha'vett was complete, forged ahead of the Venerate's army in order to sneak into Deilannis and travel back in time, believing that his doing so could end the war quickly and prevent further bloodshed. However, this only caused the Darecians, forewarned of his approach, to panic and attempt to use the Jha'vett themselves.

The result was a dire miscalculation by the Darecians, their use of Shackles reacting with the Jha'vett to strip them of their natural resistance to kan, turning them into beings of nearly pure Essence. Only Tal'kamar's decision to save them by sending them to Res Kartha allowed them to survive; effectively imprisoned there, they would eventually become known as the Lyth.

Tal'kamar himself then attempted to activate the Jha'vett, discovering too late that it had been damaged. After the ensuing explosion, a young man calling himself Davian appeared, claiming to be a friend of Tal'kamar's from an inevitable future. Davian accused Tal'kamar of willfully ignoring the evils he had perpetrated and avoiding taking responsibility for his actions, warning him that nothing in the past could ever be changed—including the death of Elliavia.

Enraged, Tal'kamar killed Davian.

Davian's words lingered as El and the Venerate's army drew closer to reaching Deilannis, though, and doubts began to fester in Tal'kamar's mind. Frustrated in his attempts to convince the other Venerate to investigate further, he was ultimately forced to ally with Andrael to help him complete and activate the ilshara: a massive wall of energy that surrounded the entire northern third of Andarra, separating it into a new area that would eventually become known as Talan Gol.

Though Andrael had been working on the ilshara for centuries, Tal'kamar only ever meant it to be a temporary measure, a way of delaying the invasion until he could be certain of El's intentions.

In the end, it would stand for more than two thousand years.