Compiled by: Archivist Serwyn Hallis, @ArcaneRegistry (Seal Confirmed)
Classification: Restricted Record — “Age of the First Eclipse”
Status: Partial reconstruction; portions redacted or lost during the Radiant Purges
When the sun first failed to rise for three consecutive days, panic swept the coastal realms. Moonlight hung crimson, tides receded, and creatures of shadow crept from hollow earth. Amid that terror, Selrik and Grimjow Varn, sons of a minor noble line from Eldmere, united scholars, soldiers, and alchemists into what became the Dawnbreak Pact.
They led humanity’s defense against the First Eclipse War — a siege by creatures born from the Umberwood’s deepest roots.
Selrik devised the Radiant Sigils, runes that turned sunlight into solid wards.
Grimjow forged the Dawnbreak Vanguard, a knightly host whose dawnsteel weapons burned with sanctified oil.
Their efforts sealed the first great rift beneath the forest and restored the sun to the sky.
The world called them saviors. The Dawnbreak was born.
Peace did not last. The seal beneath the Umberwood festered, leaking what the Radiant Codex later described as “hollow moonlight”—a reflection of the sun’s power, but inverted and hungry.
In a final attempt to stabilize the failing rift, the brothers descended with their closest knights into the root caverns. What happened there remains uncertain. Surviving accounts tell of:
A ritual of balance, where Selrik attempted to bind radiant and shadow energies.
A last stand, where Grimjow fought through moonspawn to buy time.
A betrayal by the light itself, which consumed them both.
At dawn, the rift was sealed — but the Varns never returned as men. They emerged pale and red-eyed, marked by the same power they had destroyed. The Dawnbreak called it heresy and cast them out. The forest whispered again.
For generations, the Varn brothers vanished into legend. The Dawnbreak Bastion rose from their memory — an order of zealots sworn to prevent their return.
During this period, several phenomena were recorded:
The Blood Moons: irregular lunar reddenings over the Umberwood.
The Withering Plagues: crops near forest edges rotted overnight.
The Crowbell Vanishings: entire courier routes lost without trace.
The Dawnbreak blamed the remnants of the Varn heresy but found no proof.
Recent sightings of blackened vines, cryptified estates, and scarlet moonlight mark the resurgence of the @BloodMoonShade. Eyewitness reports describe “red-haired twins” leading silent raids and turning beasts rabid.
Scholars from @VerdantBloom confirm the flora’s genealogy as unnatural — spores from the Umberwood’s sub-strata, not surface growth.
@CrowbellMessengers have begun altering coastal routes to avoid the forest edge.
The @DawnbreakPact has dispatched inquisitors, though slower and more fractured than before.
The cycle appears to be reforming: light against dark, sun against moon, faith against what it made.
“If the Dawnbreak created its enemies, and the Umberwood merely fed them, then perhaps both are reflections of the same will.
Every dawn casts a shadow. We may simply live in the next one.”
— Extract from a censored letter by Magus Orlen Tryst, executed for heresy, 78 years ago.