I, Synx Fellcaller, sit now in the Gray throne, the only place I am sure we cannot be found.

Separated from time and space, though a failure for the empire's intentions, it has proved a small refuge from the titan of Aarde.

I am writing this journal to hopefully explain to those who come after, so that you will know our mistake and do things right next time, we might still steal godhood with our designs.

We set the runes on the surface of Aine over the course of the last 100 years, I was a runescuplter myself at the very start. But my soul was found to have a concentration of power high enough to be granted access to the middle caste, letting me become a true mage to our grand empire.

We slew the gods of mana Aarde had made, siphoning their power into our wizards, though we never found out how to kill the goddess of darkness.

She seemed to have found a way to move her anchor beyond our searches.

The filthy creatures of Aine stood little opposition to our siege after that, taking only 20 years to cleanse the moon of all life and leaving its surface ready to be runemarked. 2 of those years were spent killing her titan.

When the last of the runes was placed the ritual began, the life of Aine would be used to finally let us wipe out the few remaining heathens unable to see the glory of our greatest leader. And then letting us expand past the stars.

But our problems began far before that happened.

The ritual was hijacked by something else, instead of a portal to other worlds to expand our empire, things came through the portal, souls unlike anything else we had seen.

They laughed as they shifted even the most powerful wizards to other things, moving the mana as only gods could.

I got away when the one who tried to harm me was struck by the chain of my watch, she screamed and fled away from me.

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Then far worse things had happened. Aarde had made Its titan.

We all felt its name come through our souls, Wyrmwood. Our dragon subjugators all felt the shift in their mounts, the titan became a god of dragons, and the mounts began to deform into smaller, weaker beings, holding only a single fragment of what it meant to be a dragon.

A punishment for the species for a reason we could not know, and we will never know, we dare not leave this place lest he find us.

I saw it through my astral projection, I followed it.

It built walls around the edges of our countries to stop us from leaving

I saw the mountain trees of the druids fall to the beast, our oldest enemy was gone in a single night under its might.

He turned the southern desert into nothing but black glass while seeking out the last of the people who fled there.

We came into the gray throne, 311 of us, 167 men, 144 women.

We fled here when one of the wizards at the ritual said he had worked on this project and it was likely the safest location we could reach without being in the highest caste.

I am glad we listened. I saw the royal mountain turned to slag under Wyrmwoods breath, I saw the ashes where villages once stood… I saw my own village turned to ash.

The time for grief is not now though, this is the time of planning, the time of revenge.

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And so began the second age, 8 thousand years had passed before intelligent life arose to Aarde’s liking, many seals were placed on their souls to stop them from becoming as powerful as those of the first age. But seals were being removed by those things which came through the portal those millenia back.

They now called themselves gods, covering every topic they took a liking to.

Aarde simply watched, waiting for their chance to find a way into the pocket dimensions which they would cloak themselves with.

Their test subject was a place the empire had made, a failed throne for a man who thought himself a god.

His soul had been changed, he was now not himself, but he was not the thing that came through either.

They would hold the line as best they could to not destroy the other, both sides held no ill will towards their new half as they wished to return to what they once were, Aarde was no longer the father of the world, Aarde was one of they, part of two halves.