End of Days

When the Veils Fall

"You're asking me about prophecies by who, now? Why have I ever given attention to anyone who is called "the Mad", and what makes you think this would be the first time?"

— Sage Thelun Arkady

Those who work with divination magic have to be cautious about interpretations of what they see, or they might derive the wrong idea from results. One cited example among arcanists is Azanla the Mad, a Myrisian Sage who considered herself an infallible oracle when it came to divination magic. Few dispute her power and skill within her chosen field, but many chose to instead take aim at Azanla's ability to interpret the visions she was given. Nowhere is this more apparent than the tome which she wrote before her death: "End of Days: When the Veils Fall".

Azanla chose to begin her divination by consulting a piece of writing called "The Veils", despite its unusual nature and unknown origins. Rather than pry into those, the Sage took it as truth and began to build her divination efforts from that foundation. If the writing within the resulting book is correct, these efforts soon began to give distorted results which grew increasingly chaotic until the final divination.

Myrisian Sages have kept the original writing within the Great Library of Myrisia, and only allow access to copies of the book. The keepers of the library do not permit further copies to be made, citing their reasoning as "policy" to visitors. Even so, somehow copies have been found elsewhere in Erisdaire and spreading among circles of arcanists and scholars keeping such "forbidden knowledge" to study.

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The Final Divination

"It begins with the parting of the Veils. The Veil of Night parts, and the souls of the dead are returned to the world to walk again. The Veil of Dawn parts, and all who live will be buried under the weight of ages. The Veil of Twilight parts, and all which is impossible things occur. In those days, all things are possible and nothing can happen."

— Prophecies of Azanla the Mad, Excerpt

According to Azanla's final divination, the world ends when the three Veils are breached. The text is unclear on whether they were torn through by force, or opened by the gods themselves. Regardless, the effects are described in detail over several pages of writing. The Veil of Night is explicitly the first to fall, ending separation between the world of the living and the world of the dead. Those passed souls are allowed to return to the world, either finding bodies to inhabit or becoming maddened wandering shades without physical form. The Veil of Dawn is the next, and with it the future and past blend with the present in unpredictable ways. Those who were dead become unable to reconcile the world of their memories and the world as it exists now, adding yet more chaos to what has already begun.

Finally, the Veil of Twilight is ended and other potential realities begin to bleed into Erisdaire. Entities which have been kept at bay no longer have anything keeping them out, and paths into other realities allow the chaos to begin spreading outwards. The gods are unable to keep everything stable, and under the assault of infinite possibility and the woes of eternity Erisdaire is torn apart into small pockets of stability within a sea of chaotic "everything-ness".

Scholars who admitted to reading and considering the text of this have admitted to the divinations potentially having merit, however they caution that attempting divinations from a faulty beginning is dangerous. The information received will be flawed, possibly useless, and they expect this is why "it appears chaotic and unintelligible". A few confessed to not having a certainty if "The Veils" were even a real thing in the world, though they would not dismiss it as possibly true.

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