In every age, the world of Artheria moved to a divine rhythm — one written not by kings or scholars, but by the Six Dragon Spirits who had carved the continent from the bones of the stars.
Fire, Water, Earth, Air, Greenery, and Ice — the Six Pillars of Creation.
Every two centuries, when the stars aligned above the frozen moon, the dragons stirred from their slumber within the Aether Veil. They sought out mortal vessels — men and women born under signs of power, chosen to bear fragments of their divine essence.
It was the law of balance. The sacred cycle.
And for a thousand years, the pattern never changed.
Fire's essence always chose the royal bloodline of Vulmir, the volcanic empire that thrived amid mountains of flame.
Water's essence went to Aqualis, the ocean kingdom that ruled the tides.
Earth belonged to the stonebound lands of Terravale, Air to the sky-borne nation of Sylphor, and Greenery to the emerald forests of Eldara.
And Ice — the cold, silent guardian of balance — had always belonged to the northern empire of Cryalis.
The cycle was perfect. Predictable. Divine.
Until it broke.
When the new age dawned — under the eclipse of twin suns and the rise of the crimson comet — the Six awoke once more. Across Artheria, the signs appeared.
Volcanoes trembled. Oceans surged. The winds howled like beasts, and the forests whispered songs of awakening. The people of every empire waited — nobles gathering in temples, priests lighting the spirit braziers, scholars writing prophecies they barely understood.
Then the first spirit chose.
Ignathar, the Flame Sovereign, descended upon Vulmir in a storm of molten fire. As always, it sought the royal heir — and found Prince Kael, son of Emperor Voren.
The ceremony burned brighter than any before. The magma rivers themselves rose to greet the chosen heir. The sky turned red with flame, and the people of Vulmir hailed him as the "Half-Sun Prince."
But when Ignathar's essence entered his body, something went wrong.
The fire did not settle whole.
Half of the dragon's heart turned away — drawn by another soul beyond the empire's borders.
The priests gasped. The flames dimmed.
The prophecy stones cracked.
For the first time in history, the spirit had divided itself.
Half of Ignathar's divine core went to Kael of Vulmir.
The other half… to a foreign prince, far to the east.
In the weeks that followed, one by one, the other dragons awakened.
Nereveth, the Water Dragon of Aqualis, rose from the ocean depths to embrace Prince Thalor — but once again, only half of her essence flowed into him.
The other half scattered, vanishing into the wind.
Then came Gravion, the Earth Titan, whose roar split the caverns of Terravale. His spirit, too, fractured.
Zephyra, the Sky Serpent, tore the clouds above Sylphor and screamed as her essence halved.
Floralis, the Verdant Queen of Eldara, wept as her roots trembled, her soul divided like petals torn by storm.
Five dragons. Five halves.
The balance — the divine pattern — was broken.
And at last, when the northern sky froze under the light of the moon, the final spirit awoke.
Cryonir, the Ice Dragon — the oldest, coldest, and most silent of the Six.
It was said that Cryonir's wings could still the winds of time itself, that his breath could freeze gods.
When he stirred beneath the glaciers of Cryalis, the stars dimmed in reverence.
The court of Cryalis gathered beneath the Crystal Dome — nobles, priests, and the young princess born beneath the frost moon.
Her name was Princess Seraphyne Valenore, the heir of the Ice Empire.
She stood barefoot upon the frozen altar, snow gathering in her silver hair, her pale eyes wide as the sigil of the dragon flared beneath her feet.
"Cryonir," whispered the high priest, his voice trembling. "May your will choose wisely."
For a moment, the world was still.
Then the ice cracked.
A pillar of blinding light erupted from the glacier's heart — a beam so cold it burned. The people shielded their eyes as a vast, shimmering silhouette rose within the storm.
Cryonir, the Eternal Frost.
His voice thundered across the heavens.
"The cycle shatters. The Six divide. Yet the frost remains whole."
And before any could understand his words, the dragon's essence poured forth — not in halves, not in fragments, but whole.
The power of the Ice Spirit did not divide.
But what none foresaw — what even the gods did not predict — was that the spirit did not flow into Seraphyne.
The divine frost turned south, across mountains and flame, and descended upon the third prince of Solvane — a boy of silver hair and golden eyes.
Prince Caelum.
When the storm cleared, the priests of Cryalis fell to their knees in horror.
The Ice Dragon's sigil burned not on the princess's skin, but in the skies above another empire entirely.
The frost had chosen foreign blood.
News of the impossible spread like wildfire.
The temples rang with bells, the scholars tore through ancient scrolls, and the kings of every empire demanded answers from their oracles.
"Never has the spirit betrayed its own bloodline!" cried the council of Cryalis.
"Never has the balance shifted so violently!" warned the prophets of Eldara.
The common folk whispered that the end of the age had begun.
But then came the second storm — a revelation that shattered every throne.
Caelum of Solvane, bearer of Cryonir's full essence, awakened not one, but five other dragon marks upon his soul.
Half of Ignathar.
Half of Nereveth.
Half of Gravion.
Half of Zephyra.
Half of Floralis.
And the whole of Cryonir.
The priests called him God's Chosen.
The people called him The Sixth Sun.
And the world began to fear him.
No mortal had ever held more than one spirit. Even the greatest heroes of legend bore but a fragment of their dragon's strength.
But this boy — the youngest son of Solvane's royal line — carried the power of six.
Even divided, the other empires' heirs could not compare. Their halves flickered like candles beside the inferno that burned within Caelum.
Vulmir's fires dimmed.
Aqualis's tides weakened.
The skies, the forests, the earth — all bent subtly toward Solvane's light.
And in that imbalance, the gods themselves stirred uneasily.
Yet the anomaly did not end there.
While the empires quarreled and the priests argued over prophecy, a new light appeared — not among the six, but beyond them.
In the frost-swept sanctum of Cryalis, where Seraphyne knelt in despair, the ice beneath her hands began to glow once more.
A faint warmth pulsed through the cold — something that did not belong in the realm of frost.
A voice whispered through the stillness.
"Child of the silent north… you were not forsaken. You were chosen for something that does not yet have a name."
The air shimmered. The snow turned gold.
And from the shattered altar, a seventh light rose — radiant, pure, unbound by any of the six elements.
It was neither flame nor frost, neither wind nor water. It was light itself.
When it touched Seraphyne's heart, her eyes flared white — a color that had never existed in the realm of spirits.
The priests screamed, some falling to their knees in awe, others in terror.
The world had known six dragon spirits for all eternity.
Now, for the first time, there was a seventh.
The Light Spirit.
And Seraphyne Valenore of Cryalis became its first bearer.
The records of that day are still written in every empire's annals — though no two accounts agree.
The Aqualis scribes claimed the light was born from divine mercy.
The Vulmir seers believed it was rebellion — the spark of a spirit that refused to obey the order of the Six.
The monks of Solvane declared it a sign of judgment — that the gods had created a seventh essence to watch over the Chosen Prince.
But the priests of Cryalis wrote something different.
"Light was born not from heaven, but from the wound in the world where Ice was stolen."
They called Seraphyne The Seventh Dawn.
And her existence marked the beginning of the new prophecy — the Era of Division.
In the years that followed, chaos took root.
The empires that once stood in perfect balance began to shift like tectonic plates grinding beneath the world's crust.
The Vulmir throne accused Solvane of spirit theft. Aqualis sealed its borders. Terravale fortified its mountains. Sylphor's skies turned red at dusk — a warning said to be the breath of Zephyra herself.
Everywhere, rumors spread — of divine rebellion, of gods in conflict, of dragons refusing to speak to their chosen halves.
For the first time in centuries, the voices of the Six grew silent.
Except one.
Cryonir, the Ice Dragon, spoke through his vessel — Caelum.
"Balance is weakness," he declared before the Council of Artheria.
"Order is a lie meant to chain strength. The Six divided so one could rise above all."
Those words echoed through the ages.
The day Caelum spoke them was the day the world began to fracture.
The Five other dragon heirs — Kael of Vulmir, Thalor of Aqualis, the unnamed heirs of Terravale, Sylphor, and Eldara — were forced to kneel before Solvane's power.
Treaties were redrawn. Armies sworn. Alliances reforged not by faith, but by fear.
And above them all, Caelum's empire prospered — its banners shining gold and white, its prince hailed as divine.
But deep beneath the northern ice, Princess Seraphyne's light still burned.
It did not flare like fire, nor shimmer like frost. It glowed quietly — steady and watchful.
While the world worshiped the boy of six spirits, she began to understand the truth whispered by the seventh.
The Light was not born to rule.
It was born to reveal.
Legends say that in her solitude, Seraphyne wrote a prophecy upon the ice — a verse that none could erase, not even the passing centuries:
When the frost meets fire and dawn is undone,
The hearts of six shall break as one.
Yet from the shadow where balance dies,
The seventh light shall open the skies.
Those words would not be understood until much later — when an ordinary thief with a blade of frost and a frightened princess would stumble through destiny's door.
But that, as the old chroniclers say, is another tale.