Chapter One: The Single Shadow of Vaalbara
Before the seas learned to divide, before borders learned to lie, there was only Vaalbara.
One continent. One body of land so vast that its edges curved away into legend. Mountains rose like broken blades along its spine, forests rotted and rebirthed themselves in endless cycles, and cities clung to the stone like parasites that had learned to pray. The sky above Vaalbara was wider than elsewhere in the world, as if the heavens themselves were forced to stretch to contain what lived below.
Power did not scatter here.
It concentrated.
Two families ruled Vaalbara — not by decree, not by divine right, but by a long history of bodies, wars, and quiet exterminations that never made it into songs.
The first was House Kaelvar, the lineage of swordmasters.
Their dominion was steel.
Kaelvar children learned to walk with weighted blades strapped to their backs. Their tutors broke bones early so fear would leave the body young. Technique was law, emotion was weakness, and mercy was an affectation reserved for those too slow to finish a kill. A Kaelvar sword was not merely a weapon — it was an extension of lineage, memory, and intent. Some said their ancestors had learned to cut the wind itself. Others claimed Kaelvar blades remembered every life they ended and whispered at night.
Their capital, Ironreach, was a city carved directly into black stone cliffs, its towers shaped like upward-pointing swords. Every street was a dueling ground. Every citizen understood that blood on stone was simply another form of decoration.
Opposite them stood House Myrr, the great mage bloodline.
Where Kaelvar ruled through motion and edge, Myrr ruled through stillness and thought.
Magic flowed thickest through their veins — ritual sorcery, sigil-binding, blood calculus, star-aligned invocations. They did not swing weapons; they rewrote the rules that made weapons necessary. Myrr towers floated above the ground, anchored by runic gravity wells. Their cities glowed at night with glyph-light and floating tomes, and their scholars spoke languages that bent the air when pronounced incorrectly.
To the people of Vaalbara, Myrr mages were not admired. They were endured.
Because every advancement, every magical convenience, came with a cost that was never explained in full.
Between Kaelvar and Myrr existed an ancient balance — wars fought just enough to remind each other of mortality, treaties written in blood and sealed in silence. Neither family sought total dominance.
Because both knew what waited beneath that ambition.
Beyond the western scar of the continent, where the land fell into obsidian wastelands and the sky burned a permanent dusk, lay the Demon Realm.
It was not another world.
It was a layer of Vaalbara that had refused to die properly.
The Demon Realm was ruled by no single king, no unified throne. Instead, it bred entities — warlords of flesh, thought, hunger, and contract. Demons did not conquer land; they infected it. They whispered into dreams, crawled into summoning circles left unfinished, answered prayers no god wanted.
Even Kaelvar swordmasters hesitated at its borders. Even Myrr archmages triple-checked their wards when facing west.
Because demons did not fear death.
They negotiated with it.
For centuries, the Demon Realm had remained contained — not defeated, not silent, merely patient. Its borders pulsed like a wound that refused to scar over.
And now, something had changed.
In Ironreach, swords had begun to hum without being drawn.
In the floating halls of Myrr, spells misfired — just slightly — enough to be noticed.
And deep within the Demon Realm, something ancient shifted, amused, and finally awake.
Vaalbara remained whole.
But unity, like peace, had always been temporary.
And the continent would soon remember why it had never needed oceans to divide it.