It is the Third Cycle of known Xaidran history. Three thousand years of civilization. Three thousand years of questions.
Three millennia of worship to the Pantheon.
Mortals of Xaidra live their lives according to their Faiths, each born beholden to one of the Gods. Most find themselves Faithful to one of the Siblings, the seven Gods who safeguard the Balance of human souls. Seven Gods competing to tip that Balance in their own favor.
In this world of ancient monuments, sacred incantations and powerful sprite Elementals, mortals find themselves mere pawns in the battle for souls. A battle Belkas, the War God, seemed to be winning.
Until the Silence.
In the turmoil of battle, those Faithful to Belkas looked to the sky and saw their Godmoon darken. Their deity's presence was gone. Belkas's Harbinger slain.
As the Belkan war clans reeled from the vanishing of their God, a child was born. A deformed creature, a Godless abomination cursed by the eyeless Fates.
----
Twenty years have passed. For twenty years disciples of a lost Faith have wandered Xaidra, fighting one another, killing and dying in worship to a God that seems to have abandoned them.
The Silence weighs heavier on the older generations, on those who lived with the comforting presence of the War God since birth, only to find Belkas gone.
Kael never knew the touch of War, never experienced the electrifying power of his Faith. Born on the day of the Silence, he never knew a life without that strange emptiness. To Kael's generation, the Silence is commonplace. Even as they fight and kill in one-sided obeisance to a vacant God.
Another emptiness plagues Kael. Born a misshapen, horned thing, considered an inhuman creature by his peers, Kael has fought to prove himself his entire young life. And all of it has come to nothing.
Exiled, alone, without Faith or purpose, Kael begins his journey.
----
And Asra follows.
Daughter of a War priestess, Asra yearns for escape more than anything. A release from obligations, expectations. A political marriage to the new Harbinger of War looms in Asra's future, and she looks to any diversion, any way to delay the inevitable.
Even so far as to hunt down the deformed son of a rival War priest. Even so far as to bring back her friend's horned head.
Asra's hunt begins. All the while, the fabric of Xaidra itself begins to unravel, the Balance shaken again under the threat of War.
