After Ragnarok
When the Second Celestial War ended in Edict 3350, peace did not mean recovery. Entire communities had been displaced, major centres had fallen and many routes between surviving populations were unsafe or broken. The period that followed became known as the Silent Years.
The name describes an age of aftermath and rebuilding rather than a simple absence of conflict. Aethelgard’s peoples faced the practical work of surviving a world altered by war.
Rebuilding the world
Reconstruction required more than raising walls. Roads and trade had to reconnect, damaged lands had to be made usable, lingering magical hazards had to be cleared and new political arrangements had to earn trust among survivors.
Different peoples brought their own strengths to the recovery: engineering, magical cleansing, ecological restoration, commerce and civic organisation all became part of rebuilding civilisation.
Havenstone from the ruins
Around Cycle II · Edict 3355, survivors returned to the river delta where Concordia had stood. They chose not to restore the lost City of Harmony as it had been. Instead they built a new city on the devastated site and named it Havenstone.
That decision became emblematic of the Silent Years: the old world could not simply be reconstructed exactly as before. New institutions and settlements had to be built from its remains.
Toward the present
By the following centuries, Havenstone and other recovering centres had grown into a new network of civilisation. The scars of the wars remained visible, but the Silent Years transformed survival into a durable political and economic recovery.
The present world of Aethelgard stands on that reconstruction. Its cities, alliances and regional identities are inseparable from what survived—and what had to be rebuilt—after Ragnarok.