The Sundering · Chapter I

IThe chord

There was a time when the world sang.

Three faceless principles held Adhyatma together: Vyāna, who kindles; Dhāra, who sustains; Antā, who lets go.

From their chord the Resonance was born, and with it, time itself turned.

IIThe wheel of the Eons

Each principle ruled its own Eon, and the Eons followed one another like the hours of a single day.

Dawn. Noon. Dusk. And dawn again.

Until, a thousand years ago, someone struck a false note.

The wheel stopped halfway through its turn, and the Eon that was passing then has never finished dying.

The old ones call it the Sundering.

IIIThe Plateaus of Surya

On the Plateaus of Surya, the last edge of the world still in tune, something has begun to fall silent.

The wolves all mark the same tree.

A whole flock falls onto the road, as if it had forgotten how to fly.

And in the thicket walks a bear that does not die when it should.

In Surya, they call it losing the note.

IVThe voices of Surya

No one in Surya sees the whole picture. Each one keeps a piece.

Vyressa follows the tracks of the beasts: they all end in a pit on the plateaus, so deep that a stone is never heard to land.

Koshin, the keeper of other people's things, finds letters on the stone outside his door, and three more steles hidden beyond.

Three teachers read them three different ways, and all three fall silent at the same word.

At the anvil, a tuning fork of cured metal trembles before anything that sings twice.

And one of the Mute leaves a bowl of ash on Samvara's table, with a silent stone at the bottom.

VThe fourth line

The silent stones lead to a sanctuary on the summit: warmth, clarity, serenity… and a hollow at the center.

Surya's steles bear four lines. The first three can be read.

The fourth is empty.

VIThe Marsh of the Sundering

At the end of the thread, there is a gate at the edge of the swamp.

Beyond it, in the Marsh of the Sundering, the water makes no ripples and the mud rises warm.

The hunters call what rises from the depths 'of the Eon': crabs, automatons, drowned ones who do not belong to this age.

And deep below, a carved human face has slept with its eyes closed for a thousand years.

Someone lived there, before it all became a marsh.

VIIThe Crystal Spirit

But not everything lost its note.

Some crystals keep it the way amber keeps an insect, and sometimes one awakens beside someone who knows how to listen.

A Crystal Spirit remembers the note of the living. That is why, when someone falls, it can sing it back to them.

VIIIThe Blue War Tiger

In the high passes live blue-furred tigers that never lost it.

The ancient orders trained them with tuning forks: they obey whoever sounds in tune.

They carry their own breath, and they cannot abide a fight.

IXThe Traveller's Journal

What is not written is lost twice.

That is why every soul carries its Traveller's Journal: what it has seen, what it has hunted, what is still left to discover.

XThe four lineages

Four lineages answer the call.

The Vajrahn, those of the Thunder, who keep their oaths even if the world breaks.

The Sahira, those of the Veil, born in the mists of the south.

The Yodha, those of the Breath, who heal with the same hands they strike with.

And the Elunar, those of the Crystal, who guard the knowledge of the eastern towers.

XIThe three Eons to come

One day, every traveller will hear the three principles and choose a Path.

Dawn: burn to be born.

Noon: hold to endure.

Dusk: let go to return.

Each one promises to set the wheel turning again.

XIIThe Sundering

But the fourth line is still empty, and no one knows what it said.

Perhaps someone will have to write it.

The Sundering. Chapter One. Open Beta, October tenth.