The bluejays no longer drift so carelessly through the air. Something is changing.
A nebula flows towards us, springs from the abyss like a tidal wave. They call it the Shroud. It carries disease and suffering, changes soil and people.
I must understand this madness, but discovering a remedy may prove difficult. Many trade routes between kingdoms have ceased operation... it seems that both materials and trust are in low supply.
— Balthazar, 500 D.A.
They took Pikemead's Reach. They killed King Gormander.
An army of lunatics, sickly pale, barely lifting their feet above the bloodied ground. They drag themselves through our valleys, through the miasma, led by the mad Guard of the North, Lord Vorgoth of Rimgard. I always knew the Elixir would sow a seed of distrust.
I look up at the Ancient Spires, at the sky... There is no running, no hiding. We must persevere.
— Balthazar, 503 D.A.
The Shroud swallows all, even us. We become lost to dusk, vanish, and morph into a sea of cornflower-stained twilight.
Never have I encountered a sickness, a curse of this gravitas. The fog burns eyes and lungs, but doesn't quite kill. It spreads. It manipulates. It eats away at us, slowly, leaving only a husk.
Even the Ancients have become ephemeral in the face of this malady. Their capital, a city far beyond reach and comprehension, has ascended above the clouds... an act of dereliction, or desperation?
There is no cure for this. Only the power of the Flame can keep the Shroud at bay.
— Balthazar, 505 D.A.
I believe the Shroud to be spores. Tiny, almost minuscule fragments that spread through the air... now condensed, heavy, and potent. They cling to airways, eyes, fur, and skin. They spread.
The fungi release these spores upon contact, but their roots might've been anchored below us for a long time... We awoke a slumbering malady at the earth's core when we built the initial Wells and distilled the first Elixir. The Mysterious Wanderer opened the floodgates to ruin, pushing us down a spiraling staircase towards doom.
— Balthazar, 501 D.A.
Even during times of Shroud and war, there is light. A flicker. A spark of hope.
A group of Ancients spoke to me... younglings, smaller in statue — kinder. Empathetic, rueful... Or perhaps remorseful.
For the first time, in an age of outcries, they hushed. They plan to build "Cinder Vaults", and vessels that will guide an Ancient Flame into a human shell. Body and mind, Flame and flesh... a mortal soul born from fire, able to banish the fog.
Hopefully, we can bring forward a new age this way.
— Balthazar, 506 D.A.