The Starborn Codex: Entry III
For a time, it seemed there was peace.
And indeed, from a distance, the Realms held their shape well. Each Court tended to its own domain, and each Regent guarded their fragment of the Starfallen with all due care. Trade moved quietly, uneventfully, across the borders. Messengers passed between Courts with ample nicety, necessary courtesy, and a formidable lack of incident.
Even so, with time, the air would become ripe with enough polite questioning that the first morsels of trouble would begin to rain down, soon enough. A carefully curated army of words pooled around the Starfallen fragments, before any fae army did.
Some Regents spoke of their fragment as a gift wielded with ease, as power freely given. Others treated it as something that answered only to discipline, or concentrated intent. A few spoke as though the Starfallen rewarded patience, above all.
At first, such distinctions appeared harmless. Mere philosophies, perhaps; differences in outlook more than any true division. But repeated beliefs can pile and harden. And where power is concerned, hardened distinctions seldom remain benign.
The Courts began to weigh themselves against one another. Comparisons began to surface. Of course, this would soon be followed by judgments.
And while the Realms still appeared harmonious, the Archivists marked a subtle change in the language of the Courts. Words like balance. Entitlement. Fairness – now spoken with more gravitas than before.
Still, there was no war. Only the growing sense that peace was beginning to feel more like a wish; and, increasingly, that nobody was there to ensure it was granted.
Entry IV | Fragment (Unsealed)
It is difficult to say when the line was first crossed.
No single moment can be named. No one breach that the Realms could later point to and say: there. There was the beginning.
In the years before the war, the Archivists can identify only a sequence of events, each ordinary enough to excuse on its own.
A trace of one Court in a place it had no cause to be, a ritual watched too closely, a fragment of the Starfallen regarded not with reverence, but with… desire.
For a time, such things may be overlooked. But oblivion is a choice, and never a merciful one for long. What is refused in the name of peace – refused in the name of restraint, does not vanish. It gathers. It waits. And in time, it makes itself felt.
So too here.
What the Regents would not see soon became impossible to ignore.
And from then on, harmony belonged only to memory.
