The Fracture

The Fracture changed Aurelia forever.

When the sky first broke across the continent, something passed through the world with it.

A pulse swept across kingdoms, cities, villages and distant wilderness. The people beneath it were changed. Arc Energy entered humanity for the first time, settling into blood, muscle, bone and spirit before anyone understood what had happened.

For some, the power awakened almost immediately.

Eyes changed.

Bodies became stronger.

Golden force answered raised hands. White lightning crossed battlefields. Flame, water, frost, crystal, living green light and darkness began appearing across a continent already under attack.

For others, the Arc remained quiet. Months could pass. Years could pass. Then, sometimes in a moment of danger, grief, protection or desperate need, something inside them finally answered.

There were no names for the Seven Arcs yet.

No Spires.

No Chosen.

No Ascendants.

No centuries of knowledge explaining Veils, Resonances or how Arc Energy moved through the body.

The first wielders learned by surviving.

Among them were Aurelian and his older brother Maximus. Aurelian awakened the golden power that would later be named Bastion. Maximus awakened the white lightning that would become known as Specter. Across the continent, others discovered the powers that would eventually be understood as Blaze, Terran, Flow, Umbra and Hollow.

The same broken sky that released the Zethra had changed the people standing beneath it.

And over generations, that change became inheritance.

The Seven Arcs passed into the families that followed. Sons and daughters inherited from the same bloodlines, but the body normally resolved around a single Arc while the rest fell away. That surviving foundation became known in later generations as a true Arc.

Rarely, two foundations endured. These Aurelians became known as Dual Arcs. One became dominant while the other altered what lay beneath it, including strength, reserves, recovery, endurance, the eyes, and sometimes even the way the dominant Arc itself behaved. Where two Arcs met successfully, they could create advantages neither would have produced alone.

Terran carried one boundary from the First Fracture onward. Every true Terran awakened by the Fracture was a woman, and that remained true through every generation that followed. The only men who ever carried Terran did so as Dual Arcs, with another Arc standing dominant.

Children were born carrying Arc Energy within them. The first desperate awakenings became understood disciplines. Veils were mastered. Resonances were studied. The Seven Arcs were named. Warriors who once discovered their power in the middle of a Zethra attack eventually gave way to generations who could spend their childhoods learning what that power might become.

More than two hundred years later, Arc Energy is inseparable from Aurelia.

It powers its warriors.

It answers its sky-chasers.

It burns in the eyes of its people.

It fills its Spires, fleets and cities with the seven colors of a civilization that learned to live beneath a fractured sky.

The Fracture brought Aurelia one of the greatest threats its people would ever face.

It also gave them the power to fight back.