In the long days since before the Dawnsong, the world of Eryndor was alone, bereft of the magic, both sorcerous and divine.
During the dawn of time, when the world of Eryndor was young and the races still learning their environs, a group of nameless humans and dwarves found the Shardspire, the biggest Soul-Star ever found to date. There, The Dawnsong was sung, and from their music, Mythrael was brought forth.
Mythrael, the First-Light
Domains: Magic, revelation, knowledge, illumination, inspiration. Epithets: First Light, The Wellsinger, Patron of the Luminarchs, The Shardborn. Symbol: A fractured crystal shard with rays around it, often stylised as a vertical shard with three radiating lines. Mythrael is the first of the sung Gods, born when humans and dwarves chanted for a thousand days at the Shardspire. His nature is sharp, dazzling, exhausting. He teaches, but his lessons strip away lies, habits and safety. The Age of Magic was his age, when he was the overseer of Eryndor.
Mythrael teaches that the Wellspring is meant to be studied, shaped and risked. In the old doctrine, ignorance is a sin, and cowardice is close behind it. His shrines were once found in every Luminarchate city, usually as towers filled with mirrors, lenses, and open spellwork, and he was the patron of The Sorcerer-Kings, as he believed that for one to rule, they must first be deeply aware of the Wellspring.
When Virulan betrayed the others and took the Dark Oaths of the Endless Night, Mythrael’s cult did not vanish. It fractured. Some insisted he had withdrawn, offended that humanity traded his harsh illumination for easier promises. Others whispered that Mythrael still speaks, but more quietly, through lone mages and visionaries rather than through thrones.
In the Age of Cyrathis, the Cult of Mythrael still exists, though often folded into academic orders and magic schools instead of public temple cults. Many common folk respect his name but do not trust him. They blame his age for the arrogance that led to the fall.
Cyraeth, The Lady of the White Flower
Domains: Life, death, fertility, illness, harvest, endings and transitions. Epithets: The Turning, The Bloom and the Barrow, She of Two Doors, Lady of the White Flower. Symbol: A circle split into black and gold halves, often with a stylised flower on one side and a grave-mark on the other.
Cyraeth is the second great deity, called during an early Crossing when plagues and famine ravaged Rhaedwyn in the late Age of Magic. Where Mythrael is sharp and blinding, Cyraeth is patient and relentless. She does not separate life and death into two rival forces. To her, they are a single cycle, a turning of the Wheel.
The southern golden flower Cyrathis, which blooms even during short, dark winter days, is held as her sacred sign. The current era, Age of Cyrathis, takes its name from that flower, and by extension from her.
Her teachings focus on acceptance of change and responsibility for legacy. Lives should feed something beyond themselves, whether children, craft, or memory. She despises stagnation. A village that burns its fields during retreat is often forgiven. A village that hoards grain while others starve is not.
The more esoteric branches of her cult insist that undeath without purpose is an offense to her. Wights, in some Dwarven doctrines, are not her servants but her disappointments, souls that broke their vows and fell out of the proper turning. Some priests even claim that those who keep their promises to the end are greeted by Cyraeth and woven into the next Cycle of the world.
Aethros, the Stormbinder
Domains: The elements, storms, sea, flame, earthshaking, raw physical power, craft in its brute form. Epithets: Stormbinder, Lord of the Four, Shaper of Vapour and Stone, The Roaring. Symbol: A broken circle of four marks, one for flame, one for wave, one for mountain, one for wind, often arranged around a central empty point.
Aethros is the god who gives shape to the physical world. Where Mythrael governs the invisible patterns of magic, Aethros governs the visible elements that answer when that magic is used. His way is not that of subtlety. His worshippers call him in thunder, drums, bells, crashing waves and bonfires.
Luminarchate texts describe his Crossing as a time of violent omens. Earthquakes, storms and strange fires marked the days leading up to his emergence. The Luminarchs called him to help stabilise their work. They had torn open paths into the Wellspring and the celestial realms, and needed a god to anchor raw power into elements that mortal bodies could survive.
He embodies both destruction and creation. Aethros loves to break things, but he also delights in anything that uses elemental power well. Forges, kilns, shipyards, storm-towers, aqueducts, anything that channels wind, water, fire or stone draws his attention. A smith who understands heat and timing honours Aethros even if they never name him.
Eryndar, World-Heart
Domains: The world itself, stone, soil, deep roots, memory, oaths, endurance, slow change. Epithets: World-Heart, The Deep Root, The Listener, Father of Foundations. Symbol: A simple vertical line crossed by three short horizontal lines, representing layers of stone or roots beneath the surface.
Eryndar is the quietest of the sung gods and arguably the most pervasive. Later theologians debate whether he was truly sung into being, or whether the great chants of Rhaedwyn woke something that was already there, a consciousness within Eryndor itself. The Luminarchate officially maintained that he was the final of the great Crossings, brought fully into awareness to stabilise a world shaken by magic and turmoil in the last days of The Age of Magic.
He is invoked whenever someone builds, swears, or remembers. Foundations of cities, bridges, Dwarvenkeeps, and even farmhouses are sometimes sprinkled with earth and blood in his name. He is believed to record oaths in the deep strata of the world. Break enough oaths in one place and the ground itself may rebel, whether through subsidence, sinkholes or quakes.
Eryndar does not care about glory. His doctrine for mortals is simple and brutal: hold your oaths, maintain what you build, and remember what came before you. Forgetting is close to a sin in his cult. Not ignorance, that belongs to Mythrael, but deliberate forgetting, the decision to pretend a promise was never made or a crime never committed.