the archives
Reckoned from the Hollowfall
All four powers hate each other. All four count their years from the same day — the Hollowfall, when a working meant to defeat death opened a wound at the heart of the world.
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before reckoning
The Elder Ruins
a torn page
East of the center stand cities of black stone, older than any history that survives. The people who raised them left no name. What their deep libraries held, and who first read it, the record does not say. The record, here, is torn.
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before reckoning
The Cold in the North
a torn page
Every people who have held the western coast have had a saying about the high range, and the sayings do not resemble one another except in one respect: each is older than the people who say it. The oldest surviving fragment is four words long, and the scribe who copied it noted in the margin that he did not know what language it had been four words in.
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c. 3000 BH — 0
The Golden Age of the Realm
the kingdom before the fall
In the broad center of the continent rose the most learned civilization the world has known. Its universities were the envy of every neighboring people; its cities have not been equaled since. Toward the end, its ruling council began to ask whether death was truly a necessary feature of existence. The histories agree the question was asked. The histories say little else.
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Year 0
The Hollowfall
the day the world broke
The kingdom’s final working was meant to defeat death. No full account of that night survives. A wound opened at the heart of the world, and what had been outside began to come through. The kingdom did not see morning. The world has been bleeding ever since — magic thinning out of it, year over year, the way heat leaves a body.
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Year 0
The Winter Above
and in the north, the cold
The northern histories record that the season failed in the high range the same year the world broke, and never came back. They do not connect the two events; the north had no word from the center for a decade and wrote only what it saw. Frontier folk call the cold the Winter Above and mean, mostly, the weather. The Covenant has sent no company up those valleys in eleven hundred years, and gives no reason for that either.
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200–250 AH
The First Pact War
the corrupted come north
Two centuries after the fall, the first organized wave of the corrupted came out of the wasted south. The broken successor-states fought alone for forty years and lost a quarter of everything they held. What survived was not territory. It was the understanding that humans would have to stand together.
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312 AH
The Iron Oath
the covenant is sworn
At the Iron Hold, the surviving kingdoms swore themselves into one defensive brotherhood. Old rivalries were buried in iron. From this year forward, humanity defends itself — relying on neither the Choir’s protection nor the Court’s knowledge, and trusting neither.
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c. 600–800 AH
The Founding of the Magisteria
magic, chartered and watched
The human kingdoms founded regulated schools of magic — chartered, supervised, and held to law. Much of what the Magisteria teach was carried west out of eastern ruins by expeditions that did not all come back. The Magisteria answer questions about this carefully.
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1247 AH
The Lost Crusade
three armies march east
At the height of a confident century, three full armies marched east to retake the broken heart of the continent. None returned. The accounts of the few survivors disagree on everything but this: something was waiting, and it had prepared. The Covenant has not marched east in force since.
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1300–2400 AH
The Quiet Years
eleven centuries of cold balance
The four powers hardened into their present shapes. Skirmish, raid, and truce, but no great war. The world kept bleeding — slowly enough to ignore within one lifetime, plainly enough to read across ten.
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c. 2750 AH
The Naming of the Soulhunter
the east speaks, once
For the first time in its history, the Hollow Court issued a public warning. It named a hunter in the southern swamps — Veldrich, the Soulhunter — and told the world to stay out of the Veldris Wastes. The Court did not say what it was. The Court did not say how it knew.
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2950–3000 AH
The Recent Stirrings
the present age
The Pact’s raids grow more coordinated than its visible lords should allow. The Choir sends silent embassies that observe and depart. The Court tightens its borders and does not say why. The drain on magic accelerates. Every power has noticed. No power has named it.
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c. 3000 AH
The Present Year
the ink is still wet
In a fishing village at the western edge of the world, an old man has died of age and illness, and his grandson has come home for the funeral. What comes next is not yet written.