Ciaranol Kalvorsson was an ambitious young wizard, driven to prove himself as both a master of magic and an artisan of renown among his elven and dwarven kin. From the Felaari, he inherited a deep reverence for the arcane, and from the Athandr, an obsession with the enduring nature of stone. Under the auspices of the Yldanian Royal Academy, he worked tirelessly—some would say obsessively—to refine the art of shaping stone to anchor and sustain magic.
This practice was not new; the Felaari and Athandr had long perfected architectural techniques that defied the laws of nature, creating structures that stood unshaken for millennia. Yet these marvels relied on a constant, delicate flow of magic—one that required continued maintenance. Ciaranol sought something more: true permanence. He believed that if he could unlock the secret of sustaining magic indefinitely, his name would be spoken with reverence among both elf and dwarf alike.
But war cares little for the ambitions of scholars. As the conflict with the Kaldjari Imperium escalated, Yldan, Yost, and Ainor conscripted their most brilliant minds into the war effort. The Imperium, despite its reliance on brutal, industrial artifice, had seamlessly integrated magic into its war engines. Valdeschtauk gnomes worked frantically to counteract Kaldjari innovations, but the Imperium's artificers, working alongside orcish shamans, imbued their automatons and siege engines with divine and arcane might. The north lacked the infrastructure to match this innovation, and the Midland Alliance grew increasingly desperate for an edge.
Ciaranol was assigned to a research unit tasked with solving one of the war's greatest logistical challenges—rapid troop deployment. The Imperium's vast numbers would eventually overwhelm the north if the Alliance could not match their mobility. Traditional teleportation magic, such as Dimension Door, was too limited, and Teleportation Circle required an established network. Even Gate, wielded by the most powerful archmages, was exhausting and unsustainable.
Faced with these constraints, Ciaranol turned not to the future, but to the past.
For thousands of years, the towering Worldgates—great spires of white and silver stone—had stood as silent monuments across Encara. These artifacts were as mysterious as they were immovable, resisting all efforts to unlock their secrets. The only known use of the gates had been in ages past, when humanity first emerged upon Encara, seemingly transported through them from another world. Since that time, they had remained dormant, their purpose lost to history.
Ciaranol became obsessed. Abandoning his post, he journeyed to a distant Worldgate, convinced that their secrets could be unraveled. His first breakthrough was staggering: every Worldgate was identical—not just in construction, but down to the molecular structure of their very stone. They were not separate structures, but rather, one gate, projected across multiple locations.
The implications were profound. If the gates were all one entity, then they might serve as a bridge—not only between places, but perhaps even across time and planes. Ciaranol immersed himself in the study of prisms, magical refraction, and the manipulation of higher-dimensional space. The war raged on, Yldan lost ground, and Ciaranol's superiors threatened him with court-martial, but he pressed forward, convinced he was on the verge of something greater than himself.
Then, at the precipice of madness, he solved the puzzle.
Unlike past researchers, who had treated each gate as an isolated artifact, Ciaranol realized that they had been approaching the problem from the wrong perspective. By recalibrating their spells to treat all Worldgates as one, he believed he could awaken them, linking them once more to their original interplanar locus.
When he presented his findings to the northern alliance, desperation overruled caution. Yldan had lost three provinces, and the Imperium was pressing toward the heart of the Midlands. If Ciaranol's discovery was valid, it would be the single greatest strategic advantage the north had ever possessed. There was no time for hesitation.
A test was arranged. A full legion—thousands of soldiers—was prepared for deployment through the reawakened Worldgate. Ciaranol and his team of wizards enacted their spell, and for the first time in millennia, the towering spire shimmered, turning into a swirling vortex of blackness, a passage through the fabric of reality itself.
The legion marched through.
They never arrived at the other gate.
The northern alliance waited. Hours turned to days. Messengers sent to the arrival point found nothing but empty land. The soldiers were gone—lost to the void.
The backlash was immediate. The alliance's trust in magic wavered, and Yldan's defenses collapsed. Three more provinces fell within weeks as the Imperium tightened its grip. Thousands had been lost in the failed experiment, and the war now seemed unwinnable.
Ciaranol was shattered. He had spent years seeking to prove himself, to craft something eternal, yet all he had wrought was disaster. He begged the alliance to let the gates remain closed—to abandon his work before more lives were lost.
But they would not hear of it.
Despite his warnings, the northern alliance leaders saw no alternative. If the Worldgates could be controlled, they could still turn the tide. The research would continue—with or without him.
And so, unwilling to let others continue his work unchecked, Ciaranol returned to the Worldgates, vowing that this time, he would not allow another soul to be sacrificed on the altar of his hubris.
He had no way of knowing that his next attempt would bring ruin and salvation in equal measure.