Before the Silence that dwell upon the earth, there was a Song. It was not a melody heard by mare human ear, but a resonance felt in the soul, the fundamental vibration that nurture all of creation. Before the Grey, there was the Radiance not the harsh glare of a solitary sun, but a perpetual, gentle luminescence that emanated from the world itself, a soft light born of the very magic that saturated the air, the soil, and the stone. This was the Era of Renaissance, an age that stretched across millennia in a state of sustain harmony so stable and enduring that its inhabitants believed its perfection to be as immutable as the laws of time.
The world was a living breathing organism. Its continents were crisscrossed with ley lines, great pulsing arteries of raw arcane energy that glowed with a soft, argent light visible to those who knew how to see. Where these lines merged wonders blossomed. These natural phenomenon gave birth to the Forest of Whispering Crystals in the faraway lands of the eastern continent which were not occupied by the human race, was comprised of trees, but most of all immense, geometric crystal formations that grew in slow, musical harmony.
When the wind passed through them, it rustle leaves, and engender complex, ethereal chords that could soothe a troubled heart or inspire genius.
The Plains of Lumen to the west were vast fields of bioluminescent moss and flowers that bloomed with soft pulsing light, their cycles tied not to the sun, but to the ebb and flow of the celestial tides. Night was not a time of darkness, but a deepening of the world's inherent glow, a shift from the bright, active gold of day to the tranquil, reflective silver of evening.
Civilization was not an imposition upon this world, but an extension of it. The great cities of the Ten Kingdoms were not built overnight but they were grown with the human evolution and all its living creatures. In the kingdom of Frosthold, architects and naturalists worked together to guide the growth of living crystal into soaring, graceful spires that hummed with a constant low-frequency resonance, purifying the air and generating warmth. In the highland realms of Umbrathis the capital, mages channeled ley energy into great floating monoliths of basalt that served as both observatories and anchors for entire sky-borne districts. Society was structured around the nurturing of this symbiosis.
Mages were not merely wielders of power they were custodians, each had a vital role to play and specialization like farmers or physicians.
Hydromancers, sorcerers who possesses the ability to manipulate water, ice, and other water related element, guided the ley-springs to ensure clean water for all, Geomancers gently shifted tectonic plates to prevent earthquakes, and Auramancers curated the weather patterns to create ideal growing conditions for the luminous flora that fed the populations.
This self-sustaining symphony was orchestrated and maintained by the Grim. They were the unseen gardeners of the cosmic equilibrium, the essential curators of the Great Cycle. They were not deities to be petitioned with prayer, nor demons to be feared and warded against. They were the fundamental force of nature, as intrinsic to reality as gravity. Their sole, sacred charge was the stewardship of transition, the crossing of souls to the beyound.
When any living thing whose wisdom had shaped an age reached its natural end, a Grim would be present. Unseen, intangible, they would place a gentle, hand upon the shoulder of the departing spirit. They did not take life they honored its conclusion, guiding the soul through the Veil the subtle membrane separating the vibrant shore of life from the silent, boundless ocean of the beyond.
This transition was the very engine of the Radiance. A soul's peaceful passage was not an annihilation but a release, a return of its accumulated experiences and energy back into the world's magical ecosystem. The death of any living creature be it a sparrow, crawl, magical beasts or pets even the human all fed the strength of the forest it enriched the nourishment and prosperity of the land. It was so said everything given by Mother-Nature will definitely return to its origin.
It was a perfect, closed system of energy exchange, an endless silent dance of death birthing life, ensuring the rivers of magic flowed ever full and strong.
Among these eternal shepherds was a young Grim with a gentle hearth known as Elian. In the context of his kind, who measured time in the lifespan of stars, he was considered youthful, in his perspective, the world carried both sadness and wonder of its short-lived beauty. His assigned domain was the borderlands the places where the Veil was thin, the same area where lost souls sometimes wandered, and where the fabric of reality could develop minor, fraying edges.
He was a keeper who protected the mysteries life. A touch from him could cause a wilted flower to bloom one last time with incandescent, spectral light, or prompt a dying songbird to release a final, heart-rendingly beautiful melody that hung in the air long after its essence had returned to the Source.
His most sacred tool was the Grimoire of Eternal Passage, a tome that seemed bound in captured starlight and shifting twilight. To any mortal eye, its pages were a chaotic swirling blur of light and symbol, utterly incomprehensible. But to Elian, it was the living ledger of existence, containing the True Name of every soul, the silent litanies to quiet a restless spirit, and the profound protocols for gently opening a passage to the afterlife. It also held theoretical axioms of immense power, such as the protocol to recall a soul freshly severed a concept so dangerous, so antithetical to the natural order, that it was regarded not as a function, but as a dire warning.