[Illegible] Lost: Part I

For three hundred and twelve serene cycles, the azure world of Brevion spun in gentle harmony beneath twin lilac moons. Its people, the Tervashi, had woven an age of concord from the tapestry of their once-divided clans. Cities of coral-white stone rose beside crystal estuaries, and gardens breathed music through scented air. Novarch Councils, each member a Keeper of Memory, met beneath the Orisiel Calmhold. There they tended the Covenant of Tranquillity, a pact sealed so long ago that only the eldest sky-readers recalled its forging.

Yet in the quiet hush before dawn on the final day of peace, a single flare of anger erupted in the district of Valdrin-Spire.

No chronicler would ever trace its spark.

The Keeper Arath Valdrin, guardian of the tower’s lore, called for calm, but whispers of betrayal rushed swifter than his counsel. Crystalline transmitters sent rumours across hemispheres before the sun had fully risen. Within hours, chimes of alarm tolled from the Wind-Forged Beacons; by nightfall, the covenant lay in shards.

The Tervashi turned their brilliance to ruin.

Skalleons, once used to sow rainclouds, now rained fire upon the gardens. Tengines cracked the estuaries into fuming rifts. Wards inscribed for healing inverted and scoured flesh from bone. Brother cried against brother, each side certain the other had struck first, though none possessed proof.

In seven turning suns, every library burned and each spire toppled, until only ash clouds wandered the empty air.

It ended as swiftly as it ignited. Permanent silence settled where song had lived, the hush broken only by the soft hiss of glass cooling upon blackened sand, and by the uneasy question left trembling in the scorched air: what would be next to bow?

Days prior and far beyond the reach of any chart Brevion’s scholars had ever inked and on a sphere unnamed by Tervashi star-maps, two women stood beneath an unfamiliar sky and kissed.

~~~

Summary: As prophesied, something fundamental fractured following the wedding of Darona and Claes Ancyrion-Firedancer.

Penned by My hand on the 15th of Aeguary, in the year 983 AF.