Before history had a name for it, Ethoria was a silent, mundane world of humans—a place of simple physics and rigid mortality. The Shattering changed everything in a singular, violent instant. Without warning or prophecy, the fabric of reality tore open across the globe, creating stable, bleeding wounds in the sky and earth known as the Portals. This cataclysm did not just break the geography; it broke the laws of existence. Magic flooded into the vacuum, not as a structured force, but as raw, chaotic energy that twisted the environment and the people within it.
The Shattering was not merely an event of destruction, but of unwanted connection. Through the rifts poured the “Others”—the elves, dwarves, dragonborn, and other races—who were ripped from their own native planes and stranded in the wreckage of Ethoria. Alongside them came the horrors: beasts that defied biology and monsters that hunted for sport. The resulting collision of worlds plunged humanity into the Dark Millennia, a two-thousand-year period of anarchy where the very concept of civilization was nearly extinguished under the weight of constant supernatural siege.
To this day, the true cause of the Shattering remains the world’s most terrifying mystery. There are no known gods to blame, no ancient wizards to scapegoat, and no true explanation recorded in any surviving text. The event left behind a scarred world where Anomalies—localized distortions of gravity, time, and matter—still ripple through the landscape. The Shattering is not remembered as a tragedy to be mourned, but as the moment the world woke up to a universe that was far larger, darker, and more hostile than anyone had ever imagined.