#Event

The Sundering of Echōr¶

The climactic detonation that ended The Echōbian Civil War in 1116 UA. The blast was the result of Ad Halus's Stilled Candle: a magical working intended to entomb REDACTED.

Ad Halus had spent two years demonstrating, to his own satisfaction and Carrad's, that REDACTED could not be destroyed. Any working powerful enough to unmake it would unmake everything around it as well, and one did not destroy a thing that could step out of the moment of its destruction.

He taught pieces of the working to his witnesses on the salt flats at low tide for two years. He did not expect to survive casting it, and neither did the casters who stayed with him.

The Day¶

Ad Halus drove six dozen Helostryn casters and three of his witnesses into The Loom on the morning of 6/15/1116 UA. By the time the shafts and upper halls became a full engagement, roughly a hundred spellweavers from both sides were committed. Only seven from Halus's side reached the final chamber to complete the work.

Above, Rhaeis Nestrun had understood what was happening and thrown every master of The Vehāran at the capital. Verin Carrad held the line with The Helostryn. The two masters later met on the terraced steps of the capital and dueled to the end.

All three men were alive when the Candle went off beneath them. None was alive a breath later.

The working detonated as designed, or nearly so. REDACTED was pinned to the exact point of detonation, retrievable from that spot and that spot only, as REDACTED would one day demonstrate. The blast then followed the second half of Halus's design, racing outward as a biological kill-wave that reduced the population to ash.

Ad Halus had built a candle. The candle, snuffed, became a sun.

A circle of scorched air roughly 160 miles across settled, within the week, into the thing it has been ever since.