Historical account
Order becomes hierarchy
As Veridia grew, the Verdant Accord formalised authority between magical tiers. Access to powerful resources, surveillance, and final authority increasingly favoured the Celestial hierarchy. Measures presented as safeguards hardened into a system that many lower-tier inhabitants experienced as exclusion, while the Aeterna answered instability with still more regulation.
Xylos and the Sundering
Xylos, a Khaotari who believed Aethelgard was becoming dangerously static under Aeterna rule, turned philosophical dissent into open challenge. The attempt to arrest him ended catastrophically when Vorlag killed Xylos’s sister Lyra during the confrontation. In grief and rage, Xylos unleashed a Terraforming Edict that tore a quarter of Veridia from the continent and cast it into the western ocean. The Aeterna then overwhelmed and killed him, but the crisis could no longer be contained.
Historical significance
What changed here
The First City is physically broken before the First Celestial War is even fully underway. Xylos’s fall turns a dispute over balance and authority into the immediate cause of open celestial war.