An Excerpt from the Codex Arkanum, Vol. I – “The Veiled Fire”
“To understand magic is not to master it, but to accept its refusal to be mastered.”
—High Archivist Vellan, The Mage Guild
Magic is not born, nor made. It is.
It pulses beyond the stars in a place no living mind can grasp: the Divine Realm. Known to some as the Realm of Creation, it is infinite, radiant, and alive. Not a place but a presence. Not energy, but intent.
No soul—mortal, immortal, godspawn or ghost—can breach it. Its essence is too vast, too unbound. Its current would tear thought from bone, scatter spirit from self. And yet, it hums through all things.
Magic is not learned—it is remembered. Deep in the roots of all existence, every creature carries a shadow of the light from which magic comes.
Between the Mortal Plane and that radiant source lies the Veil—a boundary, a breath, a skin between dimensions.
To some, the Veil is a barrier, shielding the fragile world from divine overexposure.
To others, it is a womb, nurturing and shaping the raw, wild mana as it drips into reality.
In truth, it is both.
It filters, softens, sings magic into harmony before it can pass. And it judges.
When torn, it screams.
Through fractures in the Veil, corrupted magic leaks—twisted reflections of creation. Demonic intelligences slither through these wounds. They whisper to the desperate, offer power that poisons, and reshape will itself into weapon.
Even the wise do not know if the Veil was forged, or if it grew. Some whisper it was once a god, slumbering between worlds, now dreaming magic into being.
The Mortal Plane is thirsty. It drinks from the Divine drop by drop.
Magic here is scarce, jealous, and wild.
It touches different lands in different ways.
In the highlands where ley lines knot, children speak tongues in their sleep.
In forgotten forests, spells grow like moss on bone.
Near the tombs of the old Dragon Lords, even time stumbles.
Here, magic takes form—not as pure light, but as effect, change, and price.
Born not of womb or world, the Dragon Lords emerged when the first stone cooled. They were shaped from the scream of creation, sculpted from pure arcane force into flesh.
To them, the laws of the world were suggestions. They unspooled rivers into flames, turned sky to glass, slept inside stars. They had no tongues, only thoughts, and even those became storms.
Their war with the Giants ended their age.
Though their bodies were broken, they do not die, they scatter. Their essences remain sealed in vast urns beneath giant-forged tombs, still humming with unbearable magic. Their dreams seep into the land poisoning it.
Even now, a whisper from a Dragon Lord’s tomb can crack a mountain.
Elves do not use magic. They are magic.
Born with a rhythm aligned to the flow beneath the Veil, their breath hums with spell-song, their blood coils like runes.
• Twilight Elves worship the last Dragon Lord, whose colossal, sleeping form lies buried beneath their moonlit forest. From its dreams, they draw magic woven from shadow, prophecy, and dreamstuff. Their spells taste of secrets.
• Wood Elves dance at the roots of the Verdant Heart—a tree not born, but conjured by the planet's will. It channels the raw magic of growth, decay, and beasts. Their druids bleed bark when wounded, and speak to forests like lovers.
Elves do not write spells. They breathe them.
Humanity was born without magic—fragile, flame-willed, and empty-handed.
Yet emptiness is hunger.
And hunger leads to discovery.
When scholars first discovered the remains of giant forged golems, they discovered runes. These marks did not glow, they waited.
Runes are not words. They are binding contracts, etched into matter, that tell magic what to be.
A rune is not a spell. It is a cage that coaxes power into shape.
• Alone, a rune is a flicker.
• Together, they become sentences, commands, engines.
Humans learned that they must carve a rune into their flesh to access the magic around them.
Some cover themselves completely in runes, becoming living conduits, their skin a battlefield of glowing scars. These mages burn brightly and die young consumed not by failure, but by excess. The body, no matter how determined, was never meant to hold fire in its bones.
Spellbooks – Leather-bound grimoires etched with runic chains, diagrams, and preparation sequences. A patient mage can cast from a book like drawing water from a well.
Runed Items – Daggers that hum with ice, rings that whisper warding, armor that drinks lightning. Each one a relic or replica of a forgotten Giant design.
Ritual Arrays – Runes drawn into earth, sand, or stone. Used for immense acts: banishment, binding, weather control. Slow, but vast. And when disrupted… unpredictable.
Demon-cores – Powerful demons pulled from the veil, and formed into a crystal balls, implanting into humans using secret rites, allowing free manipulation of magic.
“Magic is not power. Magic is will met with method—and the world deciding whether to listen.”
—Alryn the Blinded, Archivist of the Mage Guild