Part One

“The Crafted Mountain”

Illustration [https://www.instagram.com/p/Cj3P4AXjFim/]

Chapter One

“The Artificers of Will”

A long time ago all things that were or could hope to be, were under

the guidance of the wisest; those known today only as the ´Centra´.

They alone were the keepers of the Age of Growth and they alone kept

watch over the world itself from high atop their floating cities and other sources of

awe. They surveyed and kept the balance with the aid and grace of their immeasurable

achievements. Impressive feats born from their mastery of the darkest of magics: a

power they called science. Feats to be remembered always through mistranslated

words and long, half-forgotten, fables carried across generations throughout all the

corners of this exhausted world. Stories and fairy tales, words of the very old to the

very young as scattered memories intertwine themselves with legend, as glory and

fascination eventually turn to dread and warning.

Narrations of incredible proportions, their words and bolstering claims easily

supported by the remaining Centra achievements, left for everyone to see upon this

dreaded world; large constructions, all arrogant and defiant in their design.

Temples standing proud to this day atop higher mountains while waiting for the

brave or the foolish to step up to the challenge.

Cities, magnificent still, that once stood shoulder to shoulder with any cloud, now

just ruins upon the scarred land making up the landscapes of deserts, oceans, forests,

and lakes. All of this creates a world that supplies and displays proof to these narrations

regardless of how fantastic and unbelievable some of those assembled sentences may

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seem to the smallest of listeners.

Words are always passed on with foreboding tones, for the meaning within

its message is always the same, one of hubris and the collapse that always ensues.

The Centra were felled, by what real reason one can only speculate, but gone is their

mighty civilisation, lost to us and it was a mystery that to this day no one can be

certain of their fate. For with all that they achieved and all the power they once held;

they were the rulers of an entire world and handlers of unmatched technologies,

they would still - mysteriously - disappear without a trace, leaving behind only their

accomplishments. As many and as impressive as their feats seem, even today, the fears

were not enough to save them from whatever fate befell them. During their long reign,

for countless millennia, they reshaped all the lands and built a world in their image.

They had the power to do so, and they did. They created and they destroyed.

How many wonders disappeared under the Centra’s thumb? How many were born

from their desire to create?

All of this they did, until one night, in just one night, suddenly, their entire race

was extinguished! What was this mysterious event of cataclysmic proportions that

in a single swoop robbed the world of their biggest prize, not even leaving behind a

single corpse?

What caused the mass extinction of these chosen and sent all their cities and other

flying stations crashing down towards the earth below?

The more that is revealed to us about the Centra, the closer we get to perceive their

real magnitude, the more fascinating and alluring the mystery of their disappearance

becomes. Still, the whole world is, and likely forever will be, the largest testimony for

all that the Centra ever were and forever achieved.

A whole world that even now, as it slowly awaits its collapse, persistently sings to

their glory. The Centra departed leaving behind a world of unshackled magics and

soon to be poorly resurrected technologies. With their absence, and their machines

spent and their cities toppled, so too ended the Age of Growth, but with all that the

Centra left behind, in time, a new Era would begin...

[https://www.instagram.com/p/Cj3P4AXjFim/][Illustration]