The Age of Cyrathis is the current reckoning in Rhaedwyn, and unlike the earlier Ages it has a clear, widely accepted beginning. Most chronologies date its first year from the blossoming of the golden flower Cyrathis across the ruined Fields of Angrar, a region of cracked stone and wild magic near where Lavellor once stood. For generations Angrar had been a dead scar, warped by the shattering of the Shardspire. Then, without warning, thousands upon thousands of golden flowers pushed up through the blasted soil in the space of a season. The image of a delicate bloom thriving in a corrupted wasteland proved irresistible. The new Age took its name almost at once.
The symbolism is not subtle. After the long attrition of the Age of Shadows, the Age of Cyrathis is widely seen as a kind of spring. The Darksworn remain a danger in rumour, in isolated cells, in the occasional unmasked cult, but their open influence is far weaker than at any time since the fall of the Luminarchate. Human kingdoms in western and central Rhaedwyn have stabilised, rebuilt their cities, and begun to look outward rather than simply surviving from year to year. Trade routes revive along old river-roads and coastal tracks, and new ones push into lands that were left alone during the worst Shadow years.
Beyond Rhaedwyn’s shores, the Age is marked by exploration. The rediscovery of the Shattered Reach and contact with the Shattered Reach have reopened questions that lay dormant for centuries: the true nature of the gods’ works, the rumours of a supposed City of the Gods, and the limits of the Aetheric Ocean.
It would be inaccurate to call the Age of Cyrathis a golden age. Old scars remain. Entire regions still bear the mark of wild magic, the Black Current has not vanished, and the Endless Night has not been disproved, only pushed back. Yet compared to the centuries before it, this Age is characterised by a cautious optimism. Crops are planted with the expectation they will be harvested. Children grow up hearing of the Age of Magic and the Age of Shadows as stories from “before,” not as conditions they must endure themselves.