00. Prologue
Fragment 2.3 / Synod Archives – Restricted Section / Classified “Postwar Memoirs”
Excerpt from the Chronicles of the Reconstruction
When the flames died out, only ash remained.
Entire cities had vanished, swallowed by the war.
The blackened lands were still smoking when the survivors began to rebuild.
No one speaks of the Fracture anymore.
Yet that word marked every stone, every gaze.
It was not a war between races, but a war of ideology: those who sought to rule… and those who refused to bend.
The Dark Mages erected occupation bastions and rekindled an ancient fire: that of control and imposed order.
At their call, vampires, shifters, fae - and others whose names have vanished from the archives - answered.
Alliances collapsed. Mistrust carved rifts that no treaty will ever be able to fill.
When the bastions fell, the Dark Mages disappeared… but the shadow of their crimes remained.
All mages, without distinction, were cast out.
Segregation became an unspoken law: averted eyes, closed doors, suspicions inherited from the war.
Upon still-smoldering ashes, reconstruction was slow.
The Citadel was raised as a bulwark against fear, and the Synod carved the laws of peace into stone.
Oaths were sworn… but not all survive the passage of time.
For beneath the stone, some embers refuse to die.
And it will take only a breath… for the ashes to become a blaze once more.
