When the Fragments perished, their light did not fade — it lingered, caught in the teeth of the world like embers refusing to die. The oceans simmered with molten memory, the mountains whispered names that no throat could form. The sky itself grew weary, its once-luminous veins marred by wounds of unhealed light.

In that waning age, the children of dust arose — frail, fevered, and blind to the origins of their own breath. They gathered among the ruins of the Fragments and mistook the carcasses of gods for thrones. From marrow and ash they built their kingdoms, and from those kingdoms, their faiths. They called their age dawn, though it was but the long shadow of dusk.

The corpse of the Bearer of the Furnace became the first citadel. His ribcage encased a city, his still-burning heart forged the steel that armed empires. The smoke of his lungs blackened the sky, and the kings who ruled above his bones believed themselves inheritors of his fire. They waged wars in his name, proclaiming: The flame sanctifies the sword.

But the Furnace’s curse endured — each victory kindled their ruin. Cities fell to cinder, and every crown was welded to the skull beneath it.

The Beast-Bound Wanderer’s remains seeded the northern plains. From his scattered bones grew forests of ivory — trees whose leaves were brittle, sharp, and white as famine. The people who dwelled there built shrines of vertebrae, believing that the sound of snapping bone pleased their sleeping guardian. They wore masks carved from his remains and devoured one another in ritual feasts, whispering: To consume is to live eternal.

Their lineage ended when the forest turned against them, its roots drinking their marrow. The earth itself, sated at last, fell silent.

The God-Breaker’s chains became the foundation of the southern temples. Each link a monument to defiance, each clasp engraved with the prayers of the forsaken. The priests who gathered there proclaimed liberation from heaven’s tyranny, yet in the same breath demanded worship. Their sermons spoke of freedom while their altars overflowed with bound throats. When the chains began to move on their own — slithering like serpents in the dark — none dared speak of it. Those who did were devoured.

Thus was born the Church of the Unshackled, whose faith was bondage disguised as grace.

In the west, where thunder never ceased, the Hunter of the Silent Plains was remembered not as a man but as a storm. His relic — the thunderous weapon that devoured souls — was found buried in glassed sand. The first to wield it became mad with its voice, for it demanded the endless harvest of the wicked. Yet what is wicked, when all men crave survival? They slaughtered their kin in purification rites until the desert ran black. The weapon slept again, buried beneath the bodies of believers who mistook blood for absolution.

And in the east, where the wind carried only the echoes of hymns, the Child of the Fractured Light was exalted. His bones were placed upon a crystal altar, and from his ribcage sprang a city of glass. The rulers of that place claimed his lineage, their blood glowing faintly beneath their skin. They spoke of peace, of mercy, of redemption — but their kindness was poison. They demanded confessions carved into flesh, and those who resisted were broken on wheels of shining light. The crystal city became a mausoleum, and its song turned shrill.

So dawned the Era of Hollow Kings.

Men worshiped decay, crowned themselves gods, and bound Radiance in cages of scripture. They did not know that every prayer they uttered fed the shadow that had once been the Unspoken — now grown vast, patient, and watching.

The heavens had not forgotten. The wounds of the Architects still wept through the firmament, and from their tears, corruption dripped into the rivers of mana. The Trifold Radiance — once pure — began to shimmer with unease. Aura trembled with guilt. Life-Force soured to rot. Heavenly Radiance, stretched thin by false worship, cracked into a thousand motes that rained upon the earth as falling stars.

Those stars did not bless the land. They burrowed.

Where they fell, new life screamed itself awake — things neither divine nor mortal, birthed from the mingling of faith and filth. Serpents with the faces of saints slithered through the catacombs. Beasts of glass and marrow prowled the ruins. Men who prayed too long found their voices turned inside-out, their words becoming worms.

The first of these blighted things gathered beneath the earth, whispering in the tongue of the old gods. They remembered the silence that came before creation and sought to bring it back. From their communion, the world’s first Hellmouth began to open.

The kings, blind in their brilliance, mistook its rising glow for a new dawn. They knelt before the abyss, offering their crowns in worship.

And the abyss — kind and cunning — devoured them.

So ended the Age of Man’s Dominion, and so began the Age of Return — the slow unmaking, when Radiance and Shadow would again wrestle for the soul of creation.

Yet in the heart of that dying world, a seed remained. Neither pure nor profane. Neither light nor void.

It would not awaken for many ages, but when it did, both Heaven and Hell would tremble.