The World

This is the story of a planet with a star inside.

The story begins with time. After time, the Fog appears. After the Fog, the stars appear. After the stars, the planet appears. After the planet, six moons appear. After the six moons, the Rings appear. Upon the Rings, life appears.

Life thrives upon the Rings. It thrives for slow eons. Thousands of years pass as a single note in the shimmering music of the spheres, echoing into eternity. The Rings are composed of crystals that emit a music of light, which reflects off the moons to illuminate the planet. Every soul has limitless magical ability. They co-create crystalline civilizations. The motto among them was, “Ask and ye shall receive,” and they all ask for music. Because of their close kinship to magic, all souls are immortal.

But the star inside the planet is not immortal. It grows in mass day by day, and thus its gravity gets stronger and stronger. One day, the Rings collapse into the surface of the planet, forming a sheer wall of violet rock splitting the planet in two. They call this wall the Spine. After the trauma of this event, known later as Ringfall, all souls live on the surface of the planet as mortals, with no memory of how to wield magic.

Life evolves in this fallen state. The initial survivors land among the archipelago known later as Maratar. The land is covered in a red sand where nothing grows. Survival was difficult enough even before the tyranus myrmecia crawled out of the deep.

A first migration was proposed. Some feared the sea more than the tyranus myrmecia, and thus remained behind.

Those who left made seafaring vessels and braved the angry sea, full of hungry leviathans. Many ships were lost in the perilous journey east. When at last they arrived at the plateau of metamorphic rock known later as ye(Salem, they were immediately accosted by sentient dromæosaurids. The migrants, weary from their voyage, did not find the peace they desperately sought.

Some of the migrants concluded that no matter how far they traveled, they would have to carve a space for themselves into the world. Thus, they committed to learning how to fight the dromæosaurids. Others disagreed, and would rather be nomads forever than to fight forever. Thus the second migration began.

The second migration traveled north. When they came to the foot of the Spine, they scaled it to the heavens. Then they climbed back down, they found a vast desert with a fertile coastline, a land that known later as mia'Nihaul. After journeying for long into the desert, an elder name Elris Mohaded received a vision. Elris Mohaded gathered the entirety of the second migration around himself. He told them everything his vision contained. He saw the map of the world. He described the six continents, and the six people. “We have left two peoples behind. We could stop here and become the third.”

In response to his vision, the migration split. There were those who remained at Elris Mohaded’s side to learn more. There were those who went back to look for the forest that covered an entire continent. There were those who went forward, seeking to look out upon the sea from white cliffs, and there were those who wanted to have blue skin and gaze at the stars upon the mountains.

Millennia pass. Civilizations comes and go. In time, two empires emerge: Arfacsad on the north side of the Spine, originating in the white cliffs, and Maratar in the south, originating in the archipelago. However, six Ways of magic also emerge, known collectively as the Maya, who try to remember how to wield magic in order to stop the empires from eternal war. But the Maya fail.

When the surface of the planet is spoiled and made uninhabitable by the warring empires, life descends into the pits of the Netherworld. There, all souls are made artificially immortal and suffer ceaseless torture. At the end of time, the star inside the planet becomes a raging, hungry fire known as Brekthnïr. It consumes the planet, and then consumes the Rings, and then consumes the moons, and then consumes the stars, and then consumes itself.

And that’s the end of the story.

But Brekthnïr cannot consume time. In time, the Fog re-appears. After the Fog, the stars re-appear. After the stars, the planet re-appears. After the planet, six moons re-appear. After the six moons, the Rings re-appear. Upon the Rings, life re-appears, and the tale is told from the beginning yet again. But every time the Fog tells this story, there is a difference.

In our Telling, there are seven souls that remembered the magic of the Rings. They remembered that crystalline civilization in the heavens. They remembered the music of the spheres. After Ringfall, they are called the Ageless, the Immortals. There are seven: the First, the Second, the Third, the Fourth, the Fifth, the Sixth, and the Seventh. They all want the same thing: to help the mortals wake from this bad dream--to end the cycle of destruction. Thus, they teach the mortals the seven Ways of Maya in order to help them evolve and remember their inherent divinity. Thus, the world suffers the agony of death, and every time it dies, it grows closer to immortality.