It was less than a year after the fall of Shellma Natharian, and the
Basin of Life had again settled into the complacency of the everyday,
eating and drinking, working and playing, living and dying.

The first hint of something still amiss came at the Pool of Stars, where
the ancient Holy Mother formerly fell. Witnesses beheld with unease a
miasma of illness surrounding the Pool of Stars, and it was soon found
that essence put into the Pool would sometimes be rejected in a sludge
of decay, draining power from the Nexus instead of adding to it.

As Celestians puzzled worriedly over this new development, it was
discovered that the same was occuring in the Serenwilde, Glomdoring and
Magnagora. A greater shock awaited Celestians who consulted the Holy
Supernals for answers: the holy beings had become ill, suffering bouts
of amnesia and confusion, coughing up diseased green phlegm. In the
Serenwilde, Miakoda, the Spirit of the Moonhart Tree, showed signs of
paranoia and illness, shivering and coughing until she too, succumbed to
a state of dazed confusion.

The culprit soon revealed himself at Avechna's Peak in the form of the
Dread Lord of Contagion, who amid boasting speech began sabotaging the
Nine Seals, drawing their power to himself. Before he could do further
harm, Avechna the Avenger met him in a powerful collision, causing him
to dissipate into a mist that covered the Nine Seals. Avechna himself
fell from that fight, weakened and losing cohesion.

Diseased parasites appeared, bubbling in diseased blisters from the Nine
Seals, draining power from the Nexii and from the Seals themselves.
Ayridion, the White Flame, realizing the direness of the situation,
heroically used His own power to begin heal Avechna, forming a crystal
cocoon over the Avenger and Himself. At the same time, he urged mortals
to slay these parasites and place them into the cocoon to restore power
to the Nine Seals.

After days of gathering parasites, inhabitants of the Basin witnessed a
cataclysmic explosion that shook the very fabric of the world, as white
energy erupted forth from beyond a Veil in the sky, covering the Seals
in healing energy and reviving the Avenger, who shattered the cocoon
with his booming cry. Undeterred, the Dread Lord of Contagion rose again
in glee and slinked beyond the great Veil of the Nine Domoth, reaching
for the Immanidivinus, the ancient source of the Elder Gods.

Horrified but drained, Ayridion resigned Himself to the inevitable, and
in a blaze of surging energy, sacrificed His own being to widen the
breach between the Nine Domoth and the Immanidivinus, deterring the
Dread Lord's encroachment, but forever separating the two realms with a
great Threshold Abyss. In the aftershocks, the four Nexii were restored
by waves of healing energy.

Thus fell Ayridion, the last Ascended from among the mortals to take up
the cloak of divinity. Never again will another mortal touch the source
of divinity, cut off by the Threshold Abyss. In His wake awoke Ilyarin,
the first among the True Ascendants of the world, neither divine nor
mortal, living beyond the Veil in the Domotheos of Life.

Thus all the world, mortal and Elders alike, watch with drawn breath,
awaiting the true nature of this new age of the Nine Domoths and the
risen Ascendants.

Penned by My hand on the 2nd of Urlachmar, in the year 189 CE.