The Spiral Timeline of Aeturnum

The First Breath (Cycle 0 - The Awakening of Grief)

“All who awaken do so with grief still blooming behind the eyes.”

The world did not begin with fire, nor with gods, but with remembrance. The First Breath marked the moment when Aeturnum inhaled every forgotten soul into being. Memory condensed into form, and sorrow gave shape to the land.

The Vaultstream Pillar first awakened here, casting its light over Lumensor. The Cyclekeepers emerged soon after, drawn from soul-resonances shaped by the Pulse. They began documenting cycles not as linear eras, but as harmonic patterns — moments where the same grief returned, in new forms.

Cycle 7 – The Birth of the Singing Root

Deep beneath the emerald cliffs that would become the Skyward Cradle, a sentient vine known as the Singing Root awakened. This marked the rise of the Skyward Chorus, an empathic sect who believed grief could be transmuted into beauty.

The Singing Root began to echo forgotten names, and with it, dream-scribes started recording not just memories, but the emotions between them.

Cycle 9 – The Forging of Grief

With sorrow now understood as substance, the Ashbinders’ Guild was born from molten soulsteel. The first grief-forges were built, drawing echoes of dying warriors and lost lovers into blade and armor. The Thorne Mirror, a living well of soul-echoes, was rumored to reject all weapons born without true sorrow.

It was here that weaponized grief became more than metaphor — it became currency and cause for the first soul-duels.

Cycle 10 to 13 – The Memory Tithe and Ledger Uprising

As more soul-memories were weaponized or lost to decay, the Ledger Guild enacted the Memory Tithe, requiring all living to offer part of their ancestral memory to the Mnemonic Vaults.

Over the next cycles, dissent brewed. Farmers found their dreams hollow. Artists could no longer remember their inspirations. Entire soul-lines were repossessed and sealed.

The Fracture of Memory exploded when rogue Vaultpiercers and Glimmerscours stole tithes back from the Vaults. During this time, the Forgotten emerged — not as a race, but as a consequence. These were souls unanchored from any known cycle, living shadows of interrupted grief.

Cycle 14 – The Shattering Grief

The Emberleaf Conclave, in rebellion against the memory economy, began burying stolen memories in volcanic gardens. Their hope: to sprout rebirth from soot.

Their ritual, the Seeding of Sorrows, triggered a chain of Memory Blooms, where corrupted grief grew into living flame — mindless, beautiful, deadly.

Entire villages were consumed by burning memories. The Submerged Order responded with the Flooding of the Forgeries, sealing fire with tidal force, sacrificing dozens of underwater seers who never resurfaced.

Cycle 15 – The Dreaming Accord

A spontaneous, simultaneous vision swept across Aeturnum. Thousands collapsed, murmuring the same sorrowful phrase: “We are the Root’s final bloom.”

The Skyward Chorus and Thornbinders formed a temporary alliance to decipher this vision. They discovered that the Veil Prism, guarded by the Prism Wardens, had begun to fracture — its light now showing not a person’s past death, but their potential endings. Some saw thousands. Others saw none.

Dissonance erupted, giving birth to fractured soullines, and spawning Whispered Path monks who now search for clarity amid wind-etched ruins.

Cycle 16 – The Harmonic Silence

In response to growing metaphysical unrest, the Altarbound began carving Harmonic Cairns from crystal tombstones across Eldranly’s peaks. These silent shrines collect the last words of the dying and the dreams of the living.

This period is one of pause — but not peace. The air carries tension, like a breath held too long.

Cyclekeepers believe this is the prelude to the next resonance.

The Ongoing Spiral – Where Players Begin

You awaken within the Vaultstream Pillar, a being reborn — your soul drawn not from a linear past, but from a chord struck across time.

The land around you is out of tune. Echoes of future wars, forgotten loves, tragedies yet to occur walk beside myths of long-dead kings and swamp-born grief. Soulmidwives whisper of a Convergence Spiral: a moment when all cycles collapse into a single resonance. Some factions seek to stop it. Others believe it is the only truth left.

You do not know what cycle you came from. You may have been a tyrant. Or a dreamer. Or a whisper.

But you are here.

Now.

And Aeturnum waits to remember you.