Before the towers split the sky…

Before the gates bled light and shadow into the waking world…

There was peace.

Not the peace born of weakness, but the kind forged through understanding—through balance.

The world was vast then. Wiser. Wilder.

Kingdoms rose not by conquest, but by communion with forces far older than man. Spirit-beasts danced along misted ridges. Rivers sang lullabies to those who listened. Mountains walked in their sleep.

And deep beneath the earth, titans slumbered—dreaming of stars that had long since died.

Humanity lived alongside the nine Sacred Crests—divine sigils left behind by the Creators. Each governed a force: Flame, Water, Wind, Stone, Light, Shadow, Time, Spirit, and Void.

Chosen by the Crests, the Arisen built wonders that touched the sky.

Healers could whisper life into the dying. Swordsmen carved lightning from steel. Seers spoke truths buried in tomorrow.

It was a golden age. And like all golden ages, it was doomed.

The hunger came slowly. A whisper in the hearts of kings, then louder in the mouths of their prophets. Why share the flame when you could command it? Why speak with the wind when you could harness it?

And so, the first to fall were the flamebearers of Solkara, their Crest cracking under the weight of ambition. Then Elros, city of time, whose people vanished between one breath and the next.

As the Crests began to fade, a Tower rose in the east.

It had no foundation, no history—only doors. Doors that promised power. Doors that pulsed with impossible energy.

And people listened.

They entered.

Some came back blessed. Others returned broken. And many—too many—never returned at all.

Soon, the Gates followed—massive monoliths of swirling ether, tethered to dimensions not meant to bleed into this one. Monsters walked out. Spirits screamed. The veil that once guarded the world had torn.

And in the midst of this collapse… a child was born.

Unmarked. Unchosen. Unseen.

No Crest flickered near his cradle. No divine symbol bloomed on his skin. The midwives whispered of bad omens. The elders frowned. And his mother, eyes hollow from loss, could not bring herself to speak his name.

They left him outside the city walls before dawn, swaddled in cloth and silence.

By twilight, the wolves came.

But something older than wolves watched that night. Something older than flame. A shadow in the starlight. A whisper beneath the world.

The wolves never reached him.

When a traveler found the child three days later, still alive and silent beneath a withered tree, they called it a miracle.

But miracles in that age were rare—and often costly.

And far away, at the top of the Tower that touched the clouds, a single rune flickered to life.

The Crest of Ash had chosen.