Written by K.T., inspired by tales recounted by Scarlet, founder of the Scarlet Legacy

According to the legends (or as Scarlet told me), while Réa’s Creator spent millennia admiring His creation, vanity and pride gradually took hold of Him. Humanity for a while developed unabated, in harmony with the higher planes. Religions sprouted, each by different names but all equally reverent and devoted to the celestial spheres, honoring both the Creator and the Arkhons who maintain the world’s order. However, in His boundless arrogance, the Creator believed that the world He created could achieve more and was not satisfied with humanity’s progress. To accelerate what He deemed inadequate development and dazzle humans in His vanity, He gradually shared fragments of His divine knowledge, reveling as the Lightbringer and thus intervening with the balance. He infiltrated their dreams, thoughts, religions, and desires. Humanity, in its ambition, did not question whether it was worthy of such knowledge and power, but began to harness and use it. A true golden age began, with great civilizations and empires forming, and spired cathedrals reaching towards the sky, proclaiming humanity’s greatness. With pride came an insatiable lust for power, so it was only a matter of time before civilizations turned against each other, and a terrible war consumed the world.

Once again, the Creator was filled with disappointment in His creation, but this time, shame accompanied it. He wanted to erase His failure to start anew, having learned from His mistakes. So He tore the fabric of creation, exiling this world from the Cycle, leaving it to wither and cease on its own.

As the Creator finished severing His former work, He realized that He had not only isolated the despised world but also His own aides, the Arkhons, who participated in the world’s creation and operation. This introduced the possibility of new dangers. Although the Arkhons represented the lowest order of divine beings, collectively, they were powerful, and the Creator feared their potential vengeance. Therefore, He went further, hiding and shrouding His already declining world in the fog of oblivion, so that the divine beings and lesser entities existing within it would forget everything that happened before or during the separation.

The world, cut off from the Cycle, deprived of its creative power, and plunged into oblivion, was ultimately left to its fate. The Arkhé that worked within it, the essence of creation, could no longer return to the Cycle and purify itself. Trapped within the world, it became increasingly polluted, gradually corrupting and destroying everything it touched. Over the years, this had a profound impact on Réa. Nature, animals, and even humans began to change, losing more and more of their original design and function. Materials, metals, and minerals weakened. Plants and animals either became extinct or mutated in ways that allowed them to survive the harsh climatic changes. Human lifespans shortened to the extent that the polluted Arkhé (serving as life essence in humans) in the bodies of young adults, barely eighteen years old, began to crack, resulting in the loss of limbs or certain bodily functions.

In exchange, what was born and gave humans a new tool was magic. As the Pure Arkhé (or Prima Materia) on the plane of creation continuously seeped inward, fulfilling its original purpose of endowing living beings with souls, the amount of Arkhé stranded on the physical plane kept accumulating, with no escape and no cycle for purification. Eventually, it became so dense that even humans, not originally intended for this function, could perceive and utilize it. Humanity began to evolve anew as young communities, armed with this newfound power, climbed from the chaos and destruction wrought by divine separation, building upon the ruins of previous societies. However, magic was not free. Despite its ability to create wonders, because it used impure Arkhé, magicians repeatedly filtered it through their souls to shape spells, increasingly contaminating themselves. Those who were not resilient or wise enough quickly failed, becoming known as the Fallen, nearly immortal Arkhé-monsters devoid of consciousness.

Yet, humanity’s end was still not imminent. As the quantity of impure Arkhé slowly swelled to an unbearable level for the physical plane, it breached the barriers of creation, the veil between the physical and divine realms, breaking free from Réa’s grasp. Through these torn rifts, Prima Materia flowed in, seeking inward in accordance with its original function. The issue with these influxes, known as Arkhtides, was that they were never long-lasting, as the Arkhé not only entered but also quickly healed the wound through which it had come.

However, the short duration that each Arkhtide lasted was more than enough for humanity to realize that they could also collect this Pure Arkhé from the Arkhtides and use it with immense potential afterward. As humanity has always been able to adapt to everything, they survived the Creator’s intervention, isolation, the emergence of magic, and now quickly evolved to meet this new challenge. So-called Seekers emerged, individuals with souls formed from a significantly larger amount of Prima Materia. This not only made them more resistant to the Corruption and degradation but also enabled them to detect Arkhtides and collect the Pure Arkhé flowing from them.

However, the number of Arkhtides, measured in human time, was quite limited, as was the amount of the newly found resource that the Seekers could collect from them. This, as always, turned the world into an open battlefield. The Seekers became humanity’s most valuable warriors, commanding tremendous powers and entering the Arkhtides with their followers to fight against each other, aiming to collect as much valuable Pure Arkhé as possible, ensuring that less fell into the hands of others. Humanity entered a new era, regained hope, but also facing challenges unknown before…