“I had a bizarre dream the day I turned 17, terribly enough, a week after my parents died. I remember as I recuperated in the hospital after that life-changing moment which caused my eyesight to begin to deteriorate, that I had slept for quite a long time, only waking up for only a few minutes every other day, while unconscious for the rest of the time. The nurses and doctors watched over my slumbering body closely as I muttered strange things in my sleep, how I shifted and moved in strange patterns, almost as if I were living another life within my dreams… During most of my unconscious experience, I laid my eyes on the most incredible images a human could ever witness: a utopian empire, fallen to angry gods turned into demons, and the eventual catastrophe that led to it being sealed away inside a crystal – it truly felt like a whole different life within an ancient legend. As I fell each time into my deep sleep within the hospital room, I would descend from that foreign sky and into the magical world below it. I was able to see perfectly, go to sleep, wake up, and eat. It felt like months of a perfectly normal life for once, until…
I’ll tell you… While I was there, I learned about many incredible things. One of them being that it was The Elysium, a place that existed several eons ago during The Age of Crystals, shortly after The Sanctum Creatoria had finished their First Great Work of re-assembling creation. It was long before the natural world had been broken beyond repair and recognition by man, before the continents and lands had separated and settled in the oceans and skies as we now know them today in human history. This was even before the Wishing Charms started appearing, before animals hunted prey while marking territory, and before the wars and calamities of men began to take place.
It was a Shining Archipelago Complex with grass greener than Emeralds, skies more beautiful than any Lapis Lazuli and waters bluer than any sapphire. It gave birth to the first True Human Empire thriving with advanced technology, navigation, and medicine beyond the comprehension we have today, which they used to map the lands, seas, stars and depths. At this point in time, The Ancient Humans had developed such wondrous technologies, that the Gods themselves had realized the machines the humans had started producing on their own were the same machines that the Gods brought from their own world, evidence of Humanity beginning to remember their divine origin.
This however is something that The White Council did not want due to their own nefarious reasons and plans, they simply could not afford it. Thus, as Humanity’s knowledge and wisdom grew, so did The White Council’s hostility and judgement towards them, until the tipping point of the glass: The Celebration of Emanation, an Empire-wide celebration of the technological advances made thanks to a special team of scientists handpicked by The Elysian Royal Family. This newly created technology allowed them to gain access to teleportation via the use of what became known as a Crystal Rift, which had the curious side effect of giving the teleportee magickal abilities upon being used for the first time, something that the Empire gave freely to the public as a means to increase the quality of life and morale within the Empire even further.
The action of Humans gaining access to such technology and abilities absolutely infuriated The White Council, and upon them seeing the Empire providing its people with these boons to the people, it fueled their fury even further. This led them to decide it was nigh time to close the curtains for good on The Elysian Empire’s theater-play. When The White Council of The Sanctum Creatoria’s Divinatorium decided that they have had enough of the Human Pride and Ambition brewing on the surface of the recently re-formed Earth, they went ahead and cast down their heavenly judgement through their “Ballad of Maya”, emitted by the collective voices and instruments of The White Council itself as they sang their sentence aloud, making changes to The Crystalverse’s Laws which caused the unleashing of the evils we still see in our world today. The days of this Shining Nation’s People were numbered, as the seeds of sin had begun to spread amongst men while taking root in their hearts through the illnesses of Wrath, Sloth, Gluttony, Greed, Envy, Jealousy, resulting in the Perversion of the senses -and in the worst case scenario- the complete loss of intuition and perception of the divine origin. This was a work fine-tuned by The Dark Princes of The White Council. The very first war had begun: A war between the land, sea, skies, stars and depths. A war between animals, men and gods.
Little by little, the world had fallen into disarray under the negative influence of the Ballad of Maya. People got angry and started fighting each other. Courts, Manufacturers, Employers, Companies, Suppliers, and Vendors all became greedy and privatized the most essential and basic goods. Parents neglected their children while cheating on their partners and missing work. Schools failed to execute their sole purpose, as principals became selfish and the teachers impatient with their students, as those very same students became more and more detached from their realities due to the declining state of their once wonderful homes and families. Animals fought each other, hunting prey and claiming territories for themselves, while also forcing their mates to breed. Plants turned parasitic and territorial as well, killing swathes of creatures that fed on the once nutritious flora. Waters became toxic and polluted from the now infected animals that drank and bathed in them, leaving behind parasitic seeds and spores that spread throughout the Earth’s currents: The natural harmony of the world had been permanently broken by the same people who established it.
Before long, it was too late to undo the damage The White Council had done to their creation – then again, this was their “Second Great Work”, and they were proud of it. The lower ranking Gods of The Sanctum Creatoria were tasked by The White Council to descend to the surface and announce the beginning of a new age for The Humans: The Age of The Divinatorium’s Rule. Despite their infected hearts, Humans were not about to bend down to any other rulers other than the ones already in power within The Elysian Empire – The Mahe Family. They were comprised of The Elysian King & Queen, Mohan and Irene respectively, and their MANY divine children whom also undertook roles of all sorts within The Empire.
The result was catastrophic: a war that almost wiped out the archipelago nation off the face of the Earth. Thankfully, this was partially avoided by the sacrifices of Mohan and Irene, albeit too late. The King and Queen were only able to save The Elysium itself but not its people, aside from me and a few special people that slept safely and unknowingly in the depths of The Elysium’s underground, placed there in secret by The King and Queen themselves. As to how I got back to our world, Queen Irene had taken me by the hand shortly before the arrival of the Descending Gods, and led me to the top of The High Palace Exodus. Once at the top of the palace, she used her power, and sent me back up to where I came from. As I cried my way up into the clouds, desperately trying to fight Queen Irene’s energy which forced me back into my world, I saw an army of winged men descend from the distant heavens. I peered down to then see The Elysian people and royalty fighting the lower ranking Gods of The Sanctum Creatoria, and felt The White Council enjoying their view from above on their thrones of silver and gold, laughing away the ensemble of death and destruction taking place down on the surface. Their laughs rang through the clouds like sick hyenas trying to fit into the rest of the clan, wanting to infect the others with their disease.
By the evening, I had already returned to my physical body back at the hospital and felt everything around me, yet I could still see the streets of The Elysium. They had turned into flowing streams of blood originating from The High Palace Exodus, The Elysian Capitol on Pisces Isle. The blood of The Elysian people and the Demon Gods they slayed began converting itself into an elixir of Elysian Pride. They all went down with a good fight, choosing death instead of submission, loyalty over treason, and honor over cowardice. As the sun set and the skies darkened, the automatic lights of The Elysium’s infrastructure started lighting up the now corpse-filled and weapon littered city, illuminating the Ruby River formed by the vast amounts of blood left behind by the former residents and invaders.
However, as the moon started to rise from the depths of the horizon, the Ruby River began to change its tone, from a solid red to an iridescent white, thus changing into a Diamond-esque River. The blood of the lower ranking Gods of The Sanctum Creatoria had started reacting to the moonlight and had begun to separate itself from the blood of The Elysian People, seeming as if it possessed a form of consciousness of its own. This did not last long however, as soon as the divine blood had started to collect itself and flee, the spirits of The Elysian People had begun to manifest themselves through the condensation of the evaporated Elysian blood to combat this new threat. They all converged into a single entity, known as The Paragonian Sea, which swallowed up the spilled god-blood and locked it away by dispersing itself in the local waters of The Elysium, accidentally curing it of pollution and infection, with the downside of rendering it deadly to humans, albeit extremely nutritious for other divine beings, animals and nature. Despite The Elysium being partially healed, the rest of the world continued to remain ill.
Over time and exposure to the elements, the corpses and skeletons rotted and broke, eventually turning into dust. Creatures ate away at whatever they could after such a disastrous event. Residue blood was washed off the ground by rains and storms. The structures on The Elysian Archipelago decayed and fell. The smaller islands were swallowed by the rising sea levels, leaving behind only Pisces and Laurel Isles, Solstice and Corium Islands. All these places became barren and empty wastelands, taken over by the now healing flora and fauna, until the day that The Domain Keeper is set to awaken. She, with her Three little helpers and their future friends, will herald the arrival of The Heiress of the New World with her Guide and Mentor.
But as time passed, so too did the ire of The White Council and their memory of the situation; that is, until a High-ranking God of The Sanctum Creatoria took it upon herself to secretly rip out what was left of The Elysium from the Earth and contain it within a Custom Data Crystal. This act was an effective way of secretly executing an eon old emergency plan behind her superiors’ backs, while also managing to preserve The Elysium from further Time-related damage, despite the feat never being done before. Why would a Deity from the The Sanctum Creatoria do such a thing, one might ask? Very simple: That peculiar Deity had decided it was time to deviate from The White Council’s rules and end their chain of suffering, since The White Council itself had become very abusive and discriminatory towards lower ranking Gods. After all, The White Council was responsible for sending out most of the lower ranked Gods directly to their deaths, knowing entirely what was going to happen, knowing very well that The Elysian Humans were indeed a force to be reckoned with. Many of these fallen Gods were close friends with the God who sealed The Elysium, but this one act of selflessness and revenge from a God of The Sanctum Creatoria had begun a chain of events so great, it would effectively weave The World’s fate on the Tapestry of Maya itself.
The Deity who pulled off this incredibly tremendous feat was none other than Helena, The Goddess of Harmony who resides within The Sanctum Creatoria’s Crystalarium. Upon seeing how horrible things had gotten on the surface, and how much of the flora and fauna in the world were suffering because of The White Council’s “Ballad of Maya”, she began to feel guilty for her participation in the event, even if she was forced. With the help of another Goddess, she swiftly and secretly sealed The Elysium away in a Custom Data Crystal she prepared herself for the occasion, and kept it safe within her chambers inside The Sanctum Creatoria until it was time to use it. Within The Elysium however, things would take a drastic turn, changing its appearance as it was ripped away from the real world: The Elysium’s oceans are now confined within a limited circular sea as it clashed against the walls of the Data Crystal, permanently losing many of the islands originally swallowed up by the sea, leaving only the main four Islands left with an iridescent-purple and pink hued scenery.
Once The White Council found out that The Elysian Archipelago – or what was left of it – had vanished alongside a lower ranked goddess, they frantically begun theorizing, using any means possible to find out what exactly caused the great disappearances. From the highest of arts, to the deepest of magicks, they tried and tried their all to find the reason behind that mysterious archipelago’s disappearance, alongside their suspicion of the goddess that may have stolen it. Things were particularly difficult due to the absence of The Usurper, who was sleeping within his Machinata Chronosia. This fact alone left The White Council clueless, never suspecting it was two of their own who sealed the place away within a Crystal, and dared to keep it within their domain. With enough time, The White Council had yet again forgotten about the ordeal and moved on from that Era to focus on other bigger matters at hand: The re-emergence of Human civilizations. During this time, I had just been experiencing these events in a spectral, almost dream-like state – similarly to the dreams and visions I’ve had since I was a child… and I’ve never been able to forget any of it, no matter how hard I tried…”
-Willa Ataraxia, The Blind Seeress.