The centuries-long age of darkness before the Empire, when the Blight covered the land and the Old Gods ruled from shadow — ending only when Phaethon rose and cast them down.
Before the sun, there was the Dusk. For generations uncounted, the Cimmerian Blight spread unchecked across the continent, swallowing cities and poisoning the wilds. The Old Gods — deities of root and moon and star — were not absent during this age; they ruled, their power fed by the creeping dark. Mortals huddled in sun-glass enclaves, the first crude lumen-tech keeping the Blight at bay around shrinking islands of warmth.\n\nThe Age of Dusk ended when Phaethon, then a minor solar spirit, absorbed the light of a dying star and ascended to full godhood. His war against the Old Gods lasted seven years and cracked the continent. The final battle was fought at what is now the Emberlight — Phaethon's first flame against the combined shadow of the pantheon.\n\nThe defeated Old Gods were not slain but eclipsed — cast into the Cimmerian Deep, imprisoned in a darkness of Phaethon's own making. The Lumen Concordat followed, binding the three pillars of the new Empire by sacred oath. The Blight, severed from its divine patrons, retreated — but never vanished. It waits still in the Deep, gnawing.