When the Mana Burst shattered physics, and the sky split open, Elyndra did not perish in fire or vanish beneath ash—it unraveled from its foundations outward. The meteor's arrival was not merely an impact event but a destabilization of spacetime itself, a fracture in the governing constants that had once made the planet predictable, measurable, and conquerable through science. The Sky-Split transformed that rupture into a permanent wound in reality, and for nearly three generations the world endured what later historians would call The Apocalypse—a transitional age between technological supremacy and arcane survival, between engineered certainty and existential chaos.
The collapse began not with invasion, but with failure. Elyndra's vast arcologies—vertical cities designed as self-sustaining ecosystems—depended on synchronized planetary grids calibrated to stable physical laws. When gravity fluctuated by fractional but compounding margins, when quantum processors began returning impossible values, when orbital drift altered by degrees that should not have existed, those systems desynchronized catastrophically. Climate stabilization arrays shut down. Superstorms consumed Aurelia's coasts. Kharos Reach withered into accelerated desertification. Oceans shifted under gravitational distortion, disrupting tidal harmonics that had been constant for millennia. Above, orbital megastructures decayed: the ring fractured into drifting halos of debris, solar arrays spiraled into the atmosphere as molten rain, and defense satellites fell like dying constellations. The heavens became a graveyard of falling stars. Fusion cores failed not from sabotage but from miscalculated constants. Automated systems—designed to correct for error within known tolerances—encountered variables outside possibility. Cities housing millions became sealed tombs when life-support algorithms collapsed. Humanity did not merely lose electricity. It lost the assumption that tomorrow would obey the same rules as today.
The exotic radiation released by the meteor did not dissipate; it diffused, saturating the atmosphere in an invisible energy field later named mana. At first, it manifested as neurological overload—hallucinations, cellular mutation, electromagnetic interference, and gravitational irregularities. Entire regions destabilized into "wild zones" where time pooled into pockets, and gravity shifted direction without warning. Then the fractures in the sky widened into vast dimensional apertures that did not close. Through them descended waves of entities later called the Riftborn—not an army, but migrating ecosystems from beyond familiar constants. Crystalline gravitational intelligences, plasma-serpentine leviathans, shadow-phase organisms that slipped between matter and vacuum—they did not conquer so much as alter. Forests crystallized. Oceans birthed luminous megafauna. Mountain ranges fractured into floating archipelagos. Elyndra had not been invaded in the traditional sense; it had been exposed to a broader cosmology.
Resistance only worsened the instability. Railguns misfired as trajectories warped mid-flight. Directed-energy weapons refracted along distorted spacetime gradients. Drone swarms lost cohesion when sensor data contradicted physical reality. High-energy countermeasures widened the rifts they sought to seal. Megacities fell as much from resonance cascades as from Riftborn incursions. Survivors retreated into reinforced ruins, abandoning quantum networks for mechanical systems—steam turbines, hydraulic regulators, analog computation—technologies resilient to fluctuating constants. Civilization regressed not in knowledge but in practicality. Optimization gave way to endurance.
Meanwhile, mana is integrated into biology. The first generation suffered radiation sickness and neural trauma, but those born after the Burst displayed increasing tolerance. Nervous systems adapted, processing ambient energy without fatal overload. What had been external radiation became internalized capacity. Some individuals developed heightened sensitivity to energy currents; others exhibited kinetic amplification, gravitational modulation, or localized spatial distortion. These were not trained abilities but stabilized mutations under new laws of nature. Their volatility proved deadly—emotional surges triggered destructive feedback events that annihilated entire enclaves. Humanity faced extinction not only from Riftborn incursions but from its own uncontrolled resonance.
Knowledge fractured alongside infrastructure. Data vaults corrupted as quantum coherence failed. Artificial intelligences splintered into incomplete advisory systems—some degraded, others evolving into enigmatic oracles guiding isolated enclaves. Within a century, global communication collapsed. Within two, pre-Burst history became myth. Reactor cores became sacred relics. Orbital debris was read as omen. The meteor crater became taboo—a forbidden geography spoken of only in hushed reverence.
Yet Elyndra did not remain desolate. Mana accelerated evolution across all species. Flora metabolized ambient energy. Fauna developed Riftborn-resistant traits. Some extradimensional entities are integrated into ecosystems rather than dominating them. Floating jungles drifted in gravitational eddies. Crystalline plains hummed with residual charge. Aurora-lit deserts crackled with perpetual lightning. The world was no longer Earth-like; it was hybrid—more volatile, more adaptive, more alive.
Over centuries, patterns emerged. Mana flows stabilized into currents. Rift expansions slowed. Surges dampened naturally. Human abilities began manifesting in discernible stages rather than catastrophic bursts. This stabilization suggested systemization—a regulating intelligence forming within the planetary energy lattice. Whether emergent from fragmented planetary AI, an intrinsic property of mana, or an external failsafe embedded within the meteor's arrival, a governor coalesced: part algorithm, part metaphysical architecture. A limiter to prevent another uncontrolled rupture.
Then the Ascension Codex manifested.
It did not create power; power already suffused the world. It measured it. It structured growth into thresholds. It correlated ability progression with safe caps. It stabilized bloodlines and indexed Riftborn threat signatures. Civilization could rebuild within boundaries that prevented planetary collapse. The Age of Apocalypse gave way to the Age of Ascension.
And at the heart of this transformation lies the origin point of it all: the Impact Scar—The First Wound.
No map renders it accurately. The terrain resists stable geometry. From orbit, before the ring's fall, it resembled an unblinking eye—perfectly circular, rimmed in vitrified black glass untouched by erosion. At its center is no debris, no remnant of the meteor—only a hollow, an inward-opening absence deeper than geology allows. Instruments fail. Gravity pulses like a heartbeat. Sound diminishes into near-silence. Survivors report hearing layered voices not their own. Many do not return.
The crater hums at the same frequency recorded in the Codex's earliest activation logs.
Rifts converge above it. Riftborn descend there more often—but do not remain. Apex entities circle and withdraw, as though recognizing a greater presence. The Obsidian Expanse surrounding the rim contains the planet's highest mana density, its glass fragments amplifying and destabilizing abilities in equal measure. Geologists found no impactor. No trace metals. No isotopic residue.
The crater did not explode outward.
It opened inward.
Legends claim the meteor slowed before impact, pulsing with structured light. There was no mushroom cloud—only a flash of impossible symmetry. Then the Mana Burst. Then the Sky-Split.
Even now, centuries later, the Scar remains active. Mana flux originates there. When individuals breach major Ascension thresholds, the crater resonates faintly, its rim glowing as if in acknowledgment. Official doctrine calls it inert. Data correlations suggest otherwise.
Elyndra's transformation did not radiate randomly from chaos—it radiated from a focal point. The wound and the Codex are linked, whether as cause and consequence or as parts of a singular design.
The old world mastered physics.
The new world exists where physics is conditional.
And beneath the silent basin—beneath glass untouched by time, beneath gravity that beats like a pulse—something may not have finished arriving.