Story

The world humanity lives in today took its shape again after a great break in the past.

That break is called the Collapse.

Very little has reached us of the world before the Collapse. Because most of the old records were lost, no one knows for certain how the world was governed then, how people lived, or what brought the Collapse about.

The one thing known is that the old order could not go on after the Collapse.

The long time of uncertainty that followed is called the Silence. Old structures were abandoned, records vanished, and many events turned over time into stories passed from one generation to the next.

Years later, people began to search the remains of the old world again. In this era, called the Awakening, the same writings and symbols were found in different places. These finds were named the Echoes, and the name some of them pointed to, the Architect.

Then came the Shattering, and what had been gathered about the past was broken apart once more.

The history people know today is only the part of these events that can still be reached.

The cause of the Collapse is unknown.

How long the Silence truly lasted is unknown.

Why the Echoes appeared is unknown.

The Architect's purpose is unknown.

And what the Shattering really was cannot be fully explained either.

Still, there are enough signs that none of these events stands apart from the others.

People go on with their lives in the world this past left behind.

And some old things have begun to surface again.

Today's world stands on the new order built after the events of the past.

People go on with their lives, settlements grow, and structures left from the old world are still used as part of daily life.

But the traces of the past are everywhere.

Some structures built before the Collapse are still standing. For some of them it is known what they were used for. For others there is not a single reliable record.

Old writings and signs carry the same problem.

Some symbols can be read with the meanings known today. Others are found in the same form in places far apart, yet what they say cannot be worked out. Because of the knowledge lost during the Silence, it is not always possible to tell which era these finds belong to.

Records do not always agree with each other either.

Two records of the same event may confirm each other. Sometimes, though, the same event is told differently in different sources. And some records speak of names and events that appear in no other source.

With the Awakening, these remains began to be studied in a more orderly way. Researchers bring scattered records together to understand the world before the Collapse. The Echoes and the Architect remain the most disputed subjects of this work.

The records lost in the Shattering made the work even harder.

So what is known about the world comes from two sources: what people see with their own eyes today, and the pieces left over from the past.

These two sources do not always complete each other.

Some old structures are still in use, but no one knows who built them.

Some records are found, but it cannot be understood which event they speak of.

And some stories are told the same way by different people, even though there is no physical evidence for them.

The world today is once again a place of orderly life.

But the gaps the past left behind are still part of it.

How far the world people know differs from what really happened in the past is not yet known.

The Collapse

The greatest break in known history is called the Collapse.

Most of the records that have reached us were written after the event, so what is known of the time before the Collapse is largely incomplete.

How the Collapse began is unknown.

Was it a sudden event, or the result of a process that unfolded over a long time? There is no firm evidence either way.

Its results, however, are clear.

The old order came to an end, and the way people lived changed.

The Silence

The period that followed the Collapse is known as the Silence.

In this period, people's first concern was not to understand the past but to keep living under new conditions.

Some of the old settlements were abandoned. Most of the records were lost. Because the passing-on of knowledge was broken, the true details of many earlier events were forgotten.

How long the Silence lasted is not known for certain.

So few sources survive from this period that even the order of its events has not been fully worked out.

After a while, all that was known about the old world came down to a few records, buildings and spoken accounts.

The Awakening

After a long time, people began to search the remains of the past again.

This period is called the Awakening.

Old structures were studied, lost records were sought, and some places abandoned long ago were rediscovered.

At first, the only aim was to learn more about the past.

But as the search went on, it became clear that some of the finds were connected to one another.

Similarities emerged between writings and symbols found in different places.

Some records spoke of events no one had known about before.

In time, these finds came to be called, all together, the Echoes.

The Echoes

The Echoes mean more than the separate finds that have come down from the past.

Some Echoes appeared as old writings.

Some were symbols, records, or marks found on buildings.

Others were phrases about events that had never been recorded before.

One of the most striking was a line of writing found in a cave:

"We were here before."

Another record held these words:

"You came back."

Records found later suggested that these phrases had not been written at random.

During the study of the Echoes, it became clear that records left from different eras were tied to the same name:

The Architect.

The Architect

The Architect's identity is unknown.

Whether it was a single person, a title or something else entirely is not clear either.

The records linked to the Architect belong to different eras.

This raised the possibility that the Architect first appeared in an age older than known history.

But there is not enough evidence to confirm it.

While the research into the Architect was still going on, another event took place.

The Shattering

The Shattering was the second great break in the understanding of the past.

The details of the event have not reached us in full.

After the Shattering, some of the records gathered before it were lost, and some research was left unfinished.

Even so, the knowledge gained before the Shattering was not wiped out entirely.

Much of what is known about the past today is built by bringing together the records found in the time between the Collapse and the Shattering.

That is why history is still not a finished subject.

Every new find can lead to a fresh look at what was once accepted.

After the Shattering, the world found its order again.

People built a new order they could live in, and in time what had happened in the past slipped out of everyday life. The Collapse and the Silence are now seen as old history.

The research that began in the Awakening was never finished. Part of the old structures and records are still being studied today.

Lately, writings no one knew of have been found in some places. Some symbols turn up again in different sources. And some records add new details to events thought to have happened in the past.

What these finds mean is not always clear.

Some researchers think they are traces left from the world before the Collapse.

Others argue that the events may be tied to a much more recent past.

The same uncertainty surrounds the Architect.

The Architect's name appears in records from eras far apart, and no one can explain how that is possible. More importantly, some of the records linked to the Architect suggest that the same events have happened again at different times.

None of these readings has been proven.

But recent finds have brought the old debates back to life. Some phrases once thought to exist only in old records have begun to be seen again:

"We were here before."

"You came back."

"Not in this world."

What these phrases point to is unknown.

There is no firm answer as to whether they record something that happened in the past, give a warning, or are something else entirely.

The world people know today goes on in an orderly way.

But the return of some things from the past raises the question again: did the events that began with the Collapse truly end?

For now, there are only records, traces and unanswered questions.

What comes next is not yet known.

On the day the gates opened, the mist lifted early over Ocllo.

Ocllo is a small island town in the middle of misty seas. Its harbor is calm and its streets are short. Guild masters, merchants and smiths have long gone about their own work here.

That morning, new people reached the harbor.

When asked where they came from, most could not give a clear answer. Some spoke of a long journey. Others said they did not remember how the journey began.

At first the townsfolk put it down to weariness. After a long sea voyage, it is not unusual for people to forget the details.

But the number of arrivals kept growing all day.

Those who kept the harbor register found no other date on which so many travelers had reached the island in a single day. None of the arrivals gave the name of a ship. The register held only their names and the hour they arrived.

The masters of Ocllo helped the newcomers. The smiths handed out their first tools, and the merchants showed them how their first trade was done. The town had not seen such a crowded day in a long time.

Toward evening, a note was found among the harbor records.

No one knows who wrote it. It had been set down on the last page of the register, in a hand unlike the other lines:

"You came back."

Until then this phrase had been seen only in old records. It was known from the Echoes research to appear in the same form in sources from different eras.

Whether the note had anything to do with the newcomers is unclear. Some saw it as chance. Others said it was striking that the gates opened and the old records surfaced again on the same day.

The next day the newcomers began to leave the island. Some went to the mines, some to the forests, some out to sea.

Ocllo grew quiet again.

But from that day on, every traveler who came to the harbor was written into the register. And those who kept the records began to look at its last page once more every evening.