Timeline
A history of light
From the Age of Fire to the present: how the universe came to depend on a handful of Embers.
✦ t = -∞ · Start Moment
Genesis of the First Cosmos and the Embers
Before the Big Bang that birthed our universe, the First Cosmos existed. As it approached its final night, it condensed all its light, memory, and fundamental physics into indestructible crystals: the primordial Embers.
Age of Fire
Trillions of years of stars
Countless civilizations rise and fall. None suspects that the fire sustaining them is finite.
The Cooling
The last stars go out
The surviving species gather around black holes and the few remaining sources of energy.
∞-9,000
The Finding
The cartographer Ilen Sau discovers the first Ember in the heart of an Architecture. The economy of light is born.
∞-7,000 — ∞-4,000
The Amber Wars
Three millennia of war over the Embers. A thousand worlds and half of all known species are lost.
∞-4,000
The Ash appears
The first stain of Ash emerges. For the first time, the truth is understood: the Embers run out too.
∞-3,900
The Pact of the Last Sun
A fragile truce between the surviving factions. The Chamber of the Vigil is founded to guard the sharing of light.
∞-3,412 · Present
The signal from Vael
An impossible signal arrives from a forgotten planet: an Ember that grows. The Pact breaks in a single night.
🜂 t = ∞ · End Moment
The Cosmic Verdict or Re-Genesis
The final threshold of universal entropy. The Last Ember must make its ultimate choice: quench forever into silent Ash, or detonate in a singularity that sparks the Big Bang of the next cosmos.