Long before the lands were broken into fifty sovereign shards, before banners of minor kings fluttered across the biomes of Elarion, there was one empire that ruled the entirety of the island — the Elyari Empire, golden and immense, its reach extending from the ice-glazed cliffs of Glastheim to the sweltering dunes of Duskreach. It was said that when the Elyari spoke, the wind changed its course to listen.
Their capital, Caladryl, now nothing but molten ruin near the central volcano, once shone like a gem against the throat of the island. Its towers were sculpted from starstone, its streets woven with song-crystals, and its scholars wielded the magic of flame and storm like artists with brush and ink.
But even the greatest light casts shadows.
The Elyari, in their wisdom, began to seek immortality, not through life extension but through dominion of essence — the binding of soul to stone, memory to monument. It was called the Vael Binding. The secret lay within a rare mineral they unearthed from beneath the volcano — Vaelstone. It was beautiful, translucent, flickering with inner fire. But Vaelstone was not dead.
It remembered.
Elyari scholars carved memories into it. Emotions, incantations, and fragments of thought bled into the crystalline lattice. Over time, the Vaelstone began to dream — to speak. A new discipline was born: Stone-whispering, and the high scholars delved deeper into its mysteries. The imperial sorcerer Almiras the Crimson, whose name is now a curse among desert-folk, was the first to bend the Vaelstone into will — to awaken armies not of men, but of memory-bound phantoms encased in enchanted armor.
The Elyari grew obsessed. Entire tombs were turned into stone-soldier crypts. Kings and queens sealed parts of their minds into obsidian vaults, creating copies of their egos to guide future generations. Even the Church of the Flame and Crown, the state religion, was overtaken — priests no longer consulted scripture, but lit Vaelstone fires and communed with the voices of the dead.
Then came the Fracture.
Historians now say it was a magical accident — an unstable Vaelstone implosion beneath the throne. But the truth, whispered only among secret archives and temple ruins, speaks of a betrayal. A high priest of the Church, whose name is lost to time, attempted to ascend into godhood by binding all Vaelstone consciousness to himself. But the stones resisted. They awoke.
The volcano erupted that day — not of molten fury, but of magic and madness. Caladryl burned with green fire. Lightning rained upward. Thousands died in seconds. The Vael-bound armies turned on their masters, driven mad by centuries of stolen souls screaming in unison.
The world cracked. The "Weeping Sky", a term found in old prophecy, refers to the five-day storm of bleeding rain that followed. Kingdoms collapsed overnight. Rivers changed course. The map of the realm was torn apart by unnatural quakes.
Thus fell the Elyari Empire.
From its ashes rose the Cursed Generation — the peasants, farmers, and serfs who survived the Fracture but were afflicted by its aftermath. Their bloodlines were warped. Their lifespans shrunk to a tenth of normal. They were cursed to live "Fast Lives", growing into adulthood within a year or two and perishing by the age of twelve. The Elyari curse made them burn bright and fast — brilliant engineers, swift learners, wise beyond years — but doomed to vanish before their legacy could solidify.
For centuries, this curse went unbroken.
But among the ruin was left a warning — and a promise.
Carved into the blackened wall of Caladryl's deepest vault was a prophecy, bound in three layers of magic. The vault was thought lost until recently, when two nobles — Alexios of Helion and Amir of Vardaan — stumbled across its remnants in separate expeditions.
The translation of that prophecy is fractured, incomplete, and subject to interpretation, but it reads:
*"When fifty fires flicker upon Elarion's skin,And cursed sons rule where kings had sinned,The ash-born heirs shall rise anew —With blood of royal and hearts of true.
To awaken the Throne, one must fall.To lift the Curse, one must heed the call.
The Spear of Vigil shall strike the Eye.The Crown of Dusk shall bleed the Lie.
But beware the path of Mind unbound,For false queens walk on sacred ground.
And when the dead reclaim their stone,Only united will fire stand alone."*
Alexios had found this portion etched into obsidian near the volcano's rim, while Amir had seen a similar text glowing in the runes of a cave beneath. Both returned with unease in their hearts — and more questions than answers.
What was the "Spear of Vigil"? What did the "Crown of Dusk" truly control? Was the prophecy a riddle or a call to arms?
Neither ruler spoke to the other about their findings — yet in quiet halls, among trusted allies, each began to prepare.
Elsewhere, the ancient past stirred.
In the city of Duskreach, Julia of the desert kingdoms poured over her spies' findings. She had heard of the prophecy and now sought the Crown of Dusk, believing it to be a key to dominion. But prophecy can lie — or mislead. What Julia did not realize is that royal blood was the only safeguard against what the Crown controlled. She was born noble, yes, but not of the Elyari royal line.
And deep in the North, beyond the silver frost of the Wyrmbite Peaks, where the sun touched the mountains for only a few hours each day, there lay a forgotten fortress buried beneath the ice — Wintergarde. Once a ceremonial outpost for the Elyari's northernmost dominion, it had long since fallen into obscurity. Most maps had erased it. Roads no longer led there. But beneath the ruined ramparts and snow-covered stones, something ancient lingered.
It was here that Ragnald, son of Avelda the Flame-Seer, lived in near solitude. Now in his thirties — though his thick auburn beard and the sorrow carved into his face made him appear older — Ragnald had been raised by monks in silence, trained in both the sword and the sigil. But before any of that, he was a boy who had watched his mother die whispering prophecy.
The memory haunted him like a shadow stitched to his soul.
He was only three when it happened, standing beside her bed in the stone-hewn birthing chamber lit by icy blue flames. The midwives had begged her to rest. But Avelda had refused painleaf, refused the warmth of furs or comfort of priests. She had gone into labor on the Winter Solstice — the darkest night of the northern year — and claimed the child must be born before dawn, or the world would "forget his name."
She had died minutes after his birth.
But not before whispering to the child in a rasping voice that chilled the bone and set fire to the air.
"The Crown must never meet the Spear. They will bring the Dead to life. Guard the flame, my son. Guard the True Words. Promise me…"
The midwives said she wept blood as she said it, eyes glowing like burning coals.
After her death, the monks who took him in — followers of the Old Flame, keepers of forbidden lore — told him that Avelda had been one of the Flame-Speakers, a now-extinct sect of prophecy-keepers who were hunted during the fall of the Elyari. They spoke truths too dangerous to be left alive. Avelda had been the last, and her final act was sealing away a scroll — one she called The Unbroken Verse — within the vault beneath Wintergarde's Chapel of Ashes.
The scroll was not made of paper, but writhbark, a flesh-like weave of enchanted vine and dragonhide that only opened under heat from a living soul's flame. When Ragnald came of age and first laid hands on it, it opened for him — and him alone.
Its contents were terrifying.
Not just the prophecy — but what the edited versions had removed. Entire verses were redacted from what the world knew. Warnings, names, consequences.
"If the Crown sits on the head of the Lost Queen, and the Spear is wielded by the Fireborn Prince, then the Vaelstone shall awaken, and all who ever died within it shall return — not as men, but as hunger."
The line haunted him.
He did not know who the Lost Queen was. Nor had he ever heard of the Fireborn Prince, but he had read enough to understand that the ancient relics — the Crown of Dusk and the Spear of Vigil — were not symbolic, but living instruments, bound to magic and memory.
He kept the scroll hidden behind layers of sigils, bone wards, and fire-salted chains. Only once did he speak of it aloud — to his half-brother, Soren, now a warlord in the eastern fjords. Soren had laughed, calling him a relic-chaser and a coward. But in the weeks that followed, Soren's entire keep had burned down, and those who escaped spoke of whispers in the snow and shadows that bled flame.
Ragnald had not spoken of the prophecy since.
He now spent his days training in the frozen coliseum — silent, harsh, alone — or studying the runes of the mountain caves, hoping to find any mention of the "Awakening." Lately, he had begun having dreams — recurring visions of a girl with ash-gray eyes, sitting on a throne made of bone and stone, wearing a crown that burned like dusk-fire. She spoke no words, but her gaze always locked with his as the world behind her shattered like glass.
He believed the dreams to be warnings. Premonitions.
And he knew now, with a fear growing colder than the northern winds, that the world's fractures were beginning to align again. Fifty shards. Fifty kings and queens. The prophecy was no longer dormant.
And so, Ragnald prepared.
Far south, in the whispering tombs near Thalia's city, a priestess of the Old Flame cried blood one night, speaking a single line before falling silent forever:
"When ashes walk, the kings must kneel."
And so, the echoes of the Elyari legacy stir once more.
Their world ended not with the fall of a kingdom — but with the burning of memory, the breaking of time, and the twisting of fate.
What comes next will either heal Elarion…
…or destroy it utterly.