The Old Powers

There are ancient, faceless forces that have dwelt in the archipelago of Klissidar since long before the first wizard raised their first tower. Folklore around these entities varies from island to island and from people to people, but they are generally not named nor anthropomorphized; while they may be respected and even revered, with some cultures treating them with deity-like devotion, they are nearly almost feared as well. To the Kahalit they are "the old powers of earth, salt, and sky," a nomenclature that has become common across Klissidar.
What exactly the old powers are is seldom explained by folklore. They are not (like the gods) old spells gone awry after millennia; they are not (like the fae) spirits inhabiting multiple times at once; they are not (like the elementals) residual magical radiation animating the raw materials of the world. Perhaps the Kahalit phrase has stuck because they are, at their core, powers: the forces that make the world work the way it does. It's rare that the old powers are considered to have an agenda or motives or even personalities, save that they are usually perceived to be malevolent in some way. The Kahalit wizard Tehrig Obbala, after travelling to several loci where the old powers are held to be particularly strong, wrote in his memoirs:

Imagine if the law of gravity hated you. Imagine if, when you set the magnet to the iron and watched the metal shavings fly across the table, that force which pulled upon them watched you back, and wished you were dead.

Needless to say, wizards have an unusually hostile relationship with the old powers. There are plenty who live in an uneasy peace with them, even those who continue to wield the magic they bring into the world. It is said by some that the fae, who live in all times, told the old powers at the beginning and the end that the wizards would bring ruin to the archipelago, and that the old powers are trying to stop them. It is said by others that the old powers are all that is left of the fae after the end of the world, echoes reverberating backwards through time, trying to undo the destruction that has been and will be wrought. By still others it is said, frankly who wouldn't hate the wizards after spending even five minutes with one?