Volume I: Genesis

The Sundering

"Before the breaking, there was only the Veil—infinite, perfect, and whole. What we call existence is merely its wound." — Fragment from the Obsidian Tablets, author unknown

I. The World That Is

The world is called Vaelthur, which in the old tongue means "That Which Remains." It is not the original world. It is not even a shadow of what came before. Vaelthur is a scar—a place of beauty born from catastrophe, of life flourishing in the aftermath of annihilation.

To understand Vaelthur, one must first understand what it replaced.

II. The Primordial Veil

In the beginning—if such a word has meaning when speaking of eternity—there existed only the Veil. It was not a place, nor a god, nor a force. The Veil simply was. Theologians have spent lifetimes attempting to describe it: an infinite tapestry of potential, every possible world existing simultaneously as threads woven so tightly they formed a single, seamless whole.

Within the Veil dwelt the Shaelim, beings of pure intent. They were not gods in the way mortals understand divinity—they demanded no worship, offered no salvation. The Shaelim were architects, entities whose very thoughts gave shape to the raw potential around them. For eons beyond counting, they existed in perfect harmony, each Shaelim's consciousness a unique pattern contributing to the Veil's grand design.

There were three who mattered most:

Aurathos, the First Light, whose thoughts were warmth and order. Where Aurathos contemplated, stars ignited and laws of nature crystallized.

Nethyrra, the Deep Mother, whose thoughts were growth and transformation. Where Nethyrra dreamed, life bloomed in infinite variation.

Vorathen, the Hollow King, whose thoughts were endings and transitions. Where Vorathen dwelt, things achieved completion and made way for what came next.

These three were not opposites, nor enemies, nor even truly separate. They were facets of the same jewel, their purposes interlocking like the gears of a cosmic mechanism. The Veil required all three to function: creation, change, and conclusion in eternal balance.

III. The Unraveling

What caused the Sundering? The texts disagree. The Obsidian Tablets speak of hubris—a Shaelim who sought to weave a thread so beautiful it would outshine all others. The Bone Codex claims it was love—Aurathos and Nethyrra attempting to create something permanent, violating the fundamental nature of the Veil. The Whispered Verses suggest it was inevitable, that infinity itself contains the seed of its own destruction.

What is known:

A single thread was pulled too tight.

The histories call it the Threadfall—one moment in which a pattern within the Veil refused to yield to Vorathen's ending. Whether accident or intention, this single act of resistance cascaded. The interlocking purposes of the three great Shaelim ground against each other for the first time since before time existed.

The result was the Sundering.

IV. The Wound in Reality

The Veil did not merely tear—it shattered. The infinite tapestry of possibility collapsed inward, potential converting to actuality in a cataclysmic instant. Worlds that had existed only as threads became real, then collided, merged, annihilated each other.

Vaelthur is what remained when the destruction finally ceased.

Imagine a mirror shattered into a thousand pieces, and from those pieces, a single shard is chosen to become the only reality. That shard retains reflections of the others—distorted glimpses of what might have been, fragments of worlds that almost existed. These reflections are the Rifts.

The Rifts are not portals to other dimensions. They are wounds—places where the Sundering never fully healed, where the boundary between what-is and what-might-have-been grows thin. Step through a Rift, and one enters a pocket of reality that follows its own rules, a echo chamber of a world that was destroyed in the Threadfall.

This is why the Rifts reset. They are not true places—they are memories of possibility, replaying endlessly like a dream that cannot end. Those who enter a Rift may fight its denizens, claim its treasures, and emerge victorious. But the Rift itself remains unchanged, for it is not truly there to be changed. It is merely the reflection of a shattered fragment, and reflections cannot be permanently altered.

This is why the Rifts are dangerous. Each one contains the concentrated essence of a destroyed world—its creatures, its physics, its very logic. Warriors who venture within must adapt to alien rules or perish.

This is why the Rifts are coveted. For within them lies Veth, the crystallized essence of destroyed creation—and Veth is the fuel of magic.

V. The Fate of the Shaelim

The Sundering did not spare its architects.

Aurathos was the first to fall. In attempting to hold the Veil together, the First Light burned through its own essence. What remains of Aurathos is the sun itself—not a god, but a corpse, the final ember of a being who gave everything to limit the destruction. The sun's light is neither benevolent nor hostile; it is simply the last act of a dead architect, still illuminating out of cosmic habit.

Nethyrra survived, after a fashion. The Deep Mother fragmented, her consciousness splitting across every living thing that emerged in Vaelthur. She is not dead, but she is not alive—she is distributed, her will manifesting in instinct and evolution. Some claim that those who achieve perfect harmony with nature can hear her whispers, but Nethyrra as a unified entity is gone.

Vorathen alone remained whole, but changed. The Hollow King watched as endings cascaded beyond control, as conclusions became absolute rather than transitional. In the moment of the Sundering, Vorathen understood a terrible truth: in a finite world, endings were no longer gateways but terminations. Death was now real.

The texts disagree on what happened next. Some say Vorathen went mad with grief, becoming the hunger that lurks at the edge of existence. Others claim the Hollow King chose exile, withdrawing to some distant corner of reality to contemplate what had been lost. A few heretical scholars suggest Vorathen shattered deliberately, seeding mortality into the new world as a gift—ensuring that no being would be trapped in eternal existence as the Shaelim had been.

Whatever the truth, Vorathen's influence remains. Death exists in Vaelthur not as a natural law but as an echo of the Hollow King's purpose. And in the deepest Rifts, where reality grows thin, some claim to have seen a figure of absolute darkness watching from the shadows—patient, silent, waiting.

VI. The Shape of What Remains

Vaelthur is a fractured world.

The mortal plane is the largest surviving fragment of the Veil, a roughly stable reality where the laws of nature function consistently. Here, life struggles and thrives, civilizations rise and fall, and the three races contest for dominance. The mortal plane is neither paradise nor hell—it is simply what is, with all the beauty and horror that entails.

The Riftlands are regions where the boundary between the mortal plane and the echoes grows thin. Here, reality itself becomes unreliable. Gravity may shift without warning, time may flow at different rates, and the creatures that dwell within are often hybrids—beings partially of this world and partially of worlds that no longer exist.

The Rifts proper are accessible only through specific tears in reality, places where the Sundering's damage was so severe that passage between what-is and what-was becomes possible. Each Rift is unique, containing the memory of a different destroyed potential. Some hold treasures beyond imagination. All hold danger.

Beyond the Rifts lies only the Void—not emptiness, but absence. The Void is what remains of the Veil itself, stripped of all its potential, existing now only as the space between fragments. Nothing survives in the Void. Nothing can survive in the Void. It is not hostile; it is simply incompatible with existence.

VII. Theological Implications

The people of Vaelthur do not worship gods in the traditional sense.

The Shaelim are gone—dead, fragmented, or exiled. Prayer reaches no divine ear, for there are no divine ears remaining. This fundamental absence shapes all religion in Vaelthur, creating a spiritual landscape defined by loss and uncertainty.

The Church of the Fading Light venerates Aurathos, not as a god to be petitioned but as a sacrifice to be honored. Their doctrine holds that the sun's eventual dimming will mark the true end of all things, and mortals should spend their remaining time in acts of creation and preservation—building monuments to existence itself.

The Naturalists seek communion with fragmented Nethyrra through meditation and ritual. They believe that by achieving perfect harmony with the living world, one can access the distributed consciousness of the Deep Mother and gain wisdom beyond mortal understanding.

The Hollow Sects are perhaps the most feared. They worship Vorathen not with reverence but with acceptance, embracing death as the ultimate truth of the post-Sundering world. Their practices range from the contemplative to the horrific, and most civilized peoples view them with suspicion at best.

What all agree upon: the Sundering was not a beginning. It was an ending that happened to leave survivors. Vaelthur is not a world created for its inhabitants—it is wreckage they have learned to inhabit.

VIII. The Promise of the Rifts

And yet, within the scars lies hope.

The Rifts contain Veth—crystallized essence of destroyed creation, the fundamental substance of worlds that might have been. Veth is power in its purest form, and those who learn to harness it can reshape reality itself. Magic, in Vaelthur, is not a gift from the divine or an innate talent. It is salvage, the art of repurposing the debris of the Sundering.

This makes the Rifts the most valuable—and most dangerous—locations in the world. Nations war over access to them. Guilds guard their secrets jealously. And brave souls venture into echoes of destroyed reality, seeking the crystallized potential that can elevate them beyond mortal limits.

The greatest scholars believe that somewhere, in the deepest Rifts, lies enough Veth to heal the Sundering itself—to restore the Veil, or at least create something approaching its former glory. Whether this would be salvation or damnation depends on who achieves it first.

Thus ends the account of the Sundering, the death of the Veil, and the birth of Vaelthur. What follows is the history of those who survived—and what they became.

Next: Volume II: The Lineages | Index: The Codex