Chronicle of the Isola - Volume II

The War of the Five and the Shattering of the World

The War of the Five

In the waning days of the Old World, the harmony of the gods faltered.

No surviving chronicle speaks plainly of the first fracture — no blade raised, no word spoken, no oath broken that can be named with certainty. The elders of later ages would search the ruins for answers and find only silence. It is written only that the concord which bound the Five unraveled, thread by unseen thread, until unity could no longer hold.

Vaelith of the Gale, Morghain the Stone-Mother, and Nytheris of the Veil — once wardens of freedom, endurance, and hidden truth — turned from their kin. Whether driven by pride, by fear, or by knowledge too terrible to remain unspoken, none can now say. Some claim they foresaw a doom written into the world itself. Others whisper that a truth was revealed that made mercy impossible. Whatever the cause, their wrath fell not only upon their fellow gods, but upon the world they had sworn to uphold.

Thus began the War of the Five, an age without season or mercy, and the longest night the world has ever known.

Against the Three stood Pyrion the Flamebearer and Thalyra the Lady of the Tides. Fire and water, will and patience — they did not rise to claim dominion, but to preserve what remained. Where the others unmade, they sought to shield. Where the others tore at the fabric of creation, they labored to hold it together. The war raged across sky and soil alike. Storms scoured continents to their bones. Mountains were torn from their roots and cast into the sea. Shadows deepened, swallowing dreams and memories whole. Mortals fled or perished by the countless, their prayers rising unanswered into a sky split by divine fury.

And still, the gods did not relent.

The Shattering of the World

In the final years of the war, the world itself began to fail.

The chronicles say that when Pyrion’s living flame clashed with Vaelith’s boundless storm, the sky screamed. When Thalyra’s endless tides broke against Morghain’s unyielding earth, the bones of the world cracked. Land sank, seas boiled, and the firmament fractured into a thousand falling lights.

Thus came the Shattering.

Continents were broken and drowned. Oceans fled their basins, leaving behind salt, ash, and the bleached remains of forgotten empires. Mountains collapsed into fire and stone, and the air itself burned with divine residue. The Old World — vast, fertile, and whole — was reduced to ruin in a single, cataclysmic unmaking. Where waves once rolled and cities gleamed, there now stretches the Saltscar Plains — an endless expanse of scorched salt and bone-white stone. The wind there carries whispers of drowned kingdoms and shattered crowns, and those who walk its reaches swear they hear the echo of bells long sunk beneath vanished seas.

Of all the world that was, only one land endured.

The Salvation of the Isola

When the fury finally broke, Pyrion and Thalyra beheld the devastation wrought by divine hands — a hollowed world, bleeding silence where life once sang. In that hour, grief overcame wrath, and the gods turned their power from war to mercy.

Thalyra gathered the remnants of the oceans, calling the waters back from madness. She stilled their rage and bound them into a great, unbroken ring, a living sea meant to shelter rather than destroy. Pyrion, in turn, struck his hammer into the wounded heart of the world, forging a barrier of living flame — not to burn, but to ward.

Together, they shaped the last refuge.

Thus was the Isola born — a single surviving continent, encircled by sea and flame, preserved through sacrifice rather than triumph. Pyrion’s fire warmed its core and kindled life anew. Thalyra’s tides gave it breath, memory, and renewal. Their union was strained and imperfect, yet it endured — for the sake of mortals who yet lived.

Beyond their protection lay only ruin. The Saltscar Plains remained untouched by mercy — a scar upon the world, left as witness to divine folly and the cost of unchecked power.

The Fall of the Three

As the Isola was sealed, the war came to its true end.

Vaelith, whose storms had torn the sky asunder, was cast into the endless heights above the world. His body was broken, his will scattered, and his name became wind alone — carried in the ceaseless gales that roam the upper air, untamed and mournful.

Morghain, shattered by rage and grief, was bound beneath the deepest roots of the earth. Beneath the mountains she sleeps, her vast form entombed in stone. It is said her heartbeat still echoes through the world, felt as distant tremors and slow-moving quakes — reminders that endurance can become imprisonment.

Nytheris, the Veil of Twilight, vanished last. Rather than be destroyed, she withdrew beyond the reach of gods and mortals alike — into the realm between dream and death. There she is said to be bound within her own veil, trapped in endless reflection, where time has no dominion and truth has no voice.

Thus were the Three unmade.

Their power scattered, their worship silenced, their names spoken only in caution and half-remembered prayer. The balance of five was broken, and the dominion of the world passed to two alone.

And so the world grew quiet.