The Before Times

Before the ascension of the God Meridian in the year 7000BDI, magic in Mirror Domain was almost nonexistent. There were no gods to produce it in large quantities, so the only magic that existed was very basic and primitive. The energy within magic has always existed, but only a select few creatures had enough of it inside of them in order to utilize it. Back then, the only known creatures that were able to utilize "magic" were Phoenix, Dragons, and Drakes, all of which used a primitive form of purple magic.

It's not clear where these creatures drew this power from, but many people theorize that these powers stemmed from the result of biomagnification. Small animals would eat plants with trace amounts of magic like energies inside of them. This energy would compound as it got higher up in the food chain, and by the time it reached these massive apex predators it was at a high enough concentration to be stored in a pseudo mana pool and used for basic spells.

Life before the discovery of mirrors and the introduction of magic was primitive. Most societies were still in the hunter gatherer phase, with the exception of humans who'd started farming plants and livestock by this point. Many species known today simply didn't exist. Things like Satyr, Lesser Dragons, etc hadn't come into existence yet because the magic allowing species to freely crossbreed didn't yet exist. Most races were highly segregated, as no one race (other than maybe Dragons) had any real means of long distance travel. Those who tried were usually killed off by either predators or other pure races. The Purity Scale had yet to be established, so races like Kodin were often viewed as beasts and killed as a result. In return, Kodin viewed Humans as hairless monsters that needed to be culled in order to keep their tribes safe. No two races really got along in any meaningful ways until after Mirror Travel was discovered.

Because only a select few creatures had any sort of magic, and all that did were absurdly large and terrifying monsters, many people viewed these creatures as God like deities. Even if they weren't considered gods themselves, people knew enough to realize they had a higher form of power beyond their comprehension. As a result of this, people took to worshiping these creatures. Some tribes would offer gifts of food or jewelry in order to appease these creatures, which some think resulted in dragon's hoarding tendencies. Others would try to kill these creatures in order to take their power for themselves. The interest in magic, at least for Humans, far predates the official existence of it.

Records from the before times are extremely sparse, which is why most historians consider the year 7000BDI to be the "beginning" of Mirror Domain. Sure, people aren't stupid. They're well aware that there were hundreds of thousands of years predating 7000BDI, but there simply isn't a paper trail dating that far back to give any real insight as to what went on back then. Fossils, pottery, ruins, and other artifacts have been found, mostly near the coastlines that have given a vague glimpse into primitive life, but nothing substantial has come to light as of yet. It seems that once magic was discovered, people stopped caring about the past and as a result stopped up keeping many of these artifacts.

While magic didn't exist in the traditional sense, there were still several other magic things in Mirror Domain before the year 7000BDI. The mortal soul being comprised of blue magic makes many people believe that life itself is a form of magic, and without it Mirror Domain would be a barren rock floating aimlessly in the void of space. Mortals have always had "souls", even before the existence of Oasis. Other people think that time is the origin of magic, and that life was nothing more than a coincidence. The fact that time is able to exist, and that matter is able to change states. All of that was theorized to be a result of magic, and that as time went on it'd naturally coagulate and condense until it was at a point it could be harnessed. Both of these theories are backed up by the laws of magic itself. Those who try to change the world, the timeline, or existence itself too much will be erased from existence entirely. Reality wants to remain intact, and it'll do anything in its power to do so.