When the last Celestial's flame guttered out, silence fell upon the world.
The heavens dimmed, the seas stilled, and for the first time since creation, no divine voice answered.
Humanity crawled from the ashes of divine ruin — starving, faithless, terrified.
Cities were bones; rivers ran black with soot. For generations, they believed the sun itself had died.
But one man rose among the ruins — a Seer named Solmere, said to have seen the Celestials burn with his own eyes. He claimed their fall was not the end, but the beginning of human ascension. "The Celestials failed," he said, "because they gave mortals too much freedom. Let us not fail them again."
His words spread like wildfire.
In the absence of divinity, humans crowned themselves divine.
From Solmere's teachings came The Temple of the Light Eternal, and from its zealots, the Empire of Solmere — an empire that promised purity through obedience. They built cities upon the charred remains of the old world and filled their cathedrals with glass and fire.
The empire taught that the Codex — the book that burned with the Celestials — was the root of all corruption. To speak of it was heresy. To seek it was death.
The Temple rewrote history, calling the divine fire "The Ashen Sin."
They raised the Inquisition — a holy order charged with erasing every trace of the Celestials' true legacy.
Temples were razed. Old tongues forgotten. Those born with remnants of divine marks were hunted, branded, or turned into weapons in the name of Moksha.
And yet…
in the deepest corners of the world, whispers of the Codex persisted.
It was said that one spark had survived — sealed within a bloodline cursed by both heaven and hell.
A bloodline that would one day give birth to Kael Verrin.
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