Historical account
History reaches the present
By Cycle II · Edict 3601, the wars and reconstruction ages have passed into history, but their consequences have hardened into the geography, institutions, alliances, and inequalities of the living world. The great cities are established again; old ruins have successors; Celestial powers have withdrawn, been imprisoned, or become distant forces whose past decisions still shape ordinary life.
Aetheria, Edict 3601
The published story begins in Aetheria, the vast Great Salt Flats metropolis sustained by a powerful Ley Line Nexus. Its brilliance is inseparable from its division: wealth, magical comfort, and political influence concentrate in Radiant, while Misery bears heat, scarcity, exclusion, and the costs of the city’s prosperity. Beneath Aetheria’s towers, the accumulated weight of the previous 3,600 Edicts becomes the immediate world its inhabitants must live through.
Historical significance
What changed here
This record is the present boundary of the Timeline. From here, history stops functioning only as background: the consequences of the archive become the conditions of the published story.