At the end of the Ancient Era, when the mainland choked in ash and plague and the great nations of Scissalan fought their death throes beneath the hand of the Red Death, the Isles of Ornos endured. Windswept and volcanic, veiled in sea-mist and memory, they remained untouched by the pestilence that felled empires.
The world forgot them, and so they remembered themselves.
To the Sons of the Severine Sea and its northern islands, their first father was Ornos—a name as old as the Great Rift, a word spoken in the breath of waves and carved into the cliffs of the southern isle Skyya by hands who claimed descent from none but the sea.
He came, they sang, by sail of white and will unbending, and he bound the isles in covenant before passing again into legend.
Whether he walked the earth or many bore his name matters little now, for the islefolk held fast to one truth: that a second Ornos would come in the final age to finish what the first began.
And in the spring of 652 DE, a ship pierced the mists of the western horizon. Its hull bore the scars of trial, and its sails were tattered by storm.
And upon its prow stood the one whom the isles had dreamed would come.
His name was Aryyark.
Aryyark was born to Aryon, firstborn of Telion I of Arumen, a northeastern kingdom in Norrem.
When the old King fell, Aryon’s blade should have kissed the crown. Yet he was far from court, leading the northern campaigns, and in his absence, his younger brother seized the throne, cloaked in priestly sanction and the cunning of courtiers. Telion II took the seat, claiming divine favor.
And Aryon, though beloved by the legions and steeped in the rites, bowed. He did so in silence, for he believed the rites held meaning and that honor demanded obedience once the gods had been named.
Yet Telion’s fear deepened. Whispers of Aryon stirred in every feast hall. His name drew loyalty among the legions and trust among the elders of the realm. To banish Aryon by decree would fracture the realm. So Telion devised a more cunning exile.
Far to the east, across the open Severine Sea, lay a chain of half-remembered islands. Ancient tales spoke of them as Tevya—the silver isles. The name came from old merchant lore and the glint of unproven wealth. These lands had long faded from the court’s concern, lying unmapped and unclaimed for generations. Few who sought them returned, and none had drawn their coastlines with accuracy. Telion declared that the time had come to claim these isles in the name of Arumen.
He named Aryon to lead the expedition.
The court praised the honor. The priesthood proclaimed divine sanction. Telion himself smiled as he placed a silver compass in his brother’s hand, yet he granted no full muster.
Aryon requested two hundred ships, three thousand men-at-arms, and twelve thousand levies. Telion declined, offering one hundred ships and half the strength. And when Aryon pressed once more, Telion allowed him a strange freedom: he might raise whatever levies would come, and bring whatever men-at-arms remained loyal to him.
In this offer lay the trap.
Every soul who joined Aryon would remove themselves from Telion’s court. Every captain who swore to the voyage diminished Telion’s influence. Every lord who pledged coin or ship revealed his allegiance. Telion wagered that Aryon would raise a fleet of fools and dreamers, that his expedition would fail, and that in his fall, Telion’s grip would tighten.
Only the Mother would know.
And so Aryon—whose honor could not refuse the challenge to become like the heroes of old—returned to the provinces and summoned those who still honored the name of his house.
His son, Aryyark, was the first to answer.
The Voyage of Aryyark
Aryyark had reached his twenty-third sol when he took the sea, a man born for helm and tide. His eyes could read the currents, and his hands worked the sails as if the winds themselves answered him.
And before the full fleet ever touched the sea, Aryyark went first.
At his father’s bidding, and with the blessing of those who trusted his chartless instincts, he embarked with three vessels and two hundred fifty men. They departed from the port of Oloren in the final days of winter and vanished beyond the eastern sightlines, guided only by memory, wind, and divine dreams.
His ships were lean and light, provisioned for survival more than conquest, bearing men chosen for endurance and courage rather than title or rank.
He sailed in silence, and no message came for three moons. Yet Aryon mourned nothing. He fasted, as was his habit, and watched the tide.
In the fourth moon, Aryyark returned.
Two of his ships remained whole. One had burned and broken on a reef, replaced by a smaller vessel seized during the voyage, patched, foreign-rigged, and slower than the rest. He had lost nearly a quarter of his strength to storm, sickness, and skirmish, but those who returned bore fire in their eyes and spoils in their holds.
They had found land—wide, forested, and rich. He named the islands Arkylan, the ash-land, for the cliffs bled black, and the earth rose warm with volcanic breath.
From the cove of that southernmost island where they first made harbor, Aryyark sent one ship east and one west, bidding his men to trade and gather knowledge from the people of the coast. The western crew returned with grain, shaped obsidian, and bundles of dried fruit. The eastern party brought salted meat and woven cloth. Though both had spoken peace and offered gifts, only the western coast gave freely.
Aryyark steered the fleet toward that western bay and beached the ships near a gentle bend of shoreline, one mile from the nearest village. He sent a party of emissaries on foot, bearing gifts and open palms, and waited with patience.
What returned was blood.
The villagers had greeted the strangers with suspicion; then, when Arryark’s men let their guard down, they attacked. A dozen of Aryyark’s men limped back wounded, three carried on stretchers, and their report told of twenty locals who had chased them with spear and sling until the bulk of Aryyark’s force came into view. The pursuers fled at the sight of their numbers.
Aryyark sent no second envoy to them. Instead, he was in desperate need of supplies after losing so much at sea. They would need to be bold to survive, of ambition like Holmnuh. And so he issued orders at dawn to subdue the islanders. He left fifty men to guard the ships while the rest followed him up the coast.
They found the village braced for battle. The paths had been barricaded with carts, barrels, and timber. Rough palisades ringed the central houses, and fifty defenders stood behind them—farmers, elders, and youth, armed with tools and sharpened stakes. They would be no match against his Aryyark’s men of war.
Aryyark stepped forward beneath a raised banner and offered them terms. The reply came swiftly and wordlessly—a volley of arrows from the ridge.
He gave them no second chance.
Their response began with a barrage of missiles. Under the cover of archery, Aryyark split his line into seven wedges and pressed each into a different breach.
The villagers struck hard, but the formations held, with Arryark’s men slaughtering most of the defenders.
In the third wave, the barricades fell.
The few remaining villagers broke and retreated toward the clustered longhouses where women and children had been hidden.
Aryyark halted the advance. He gave no order to pursue.
As he circled the perimeter and counted the wounded, a scout reached him bearing darker news.
A second host had arrived at the shore—double the size of his ship-guard—and struck the beach with fury. They had come from farther down the coast and mistook Aryyark’s ships as the sum of his force. The skirmish at the cove grew fierce. The guards launched arrows from the decks and repelled three charges, but the enemy pressed on. One of Aryyark’s ships caught flame, and by the fifth assault, the defenders had lost half their number.
Aryyark returned at once.
With one hundred men, he descended the bluff and fell upon the exhausted attackers at the moment of their final push. His charge broke them utterly. The sand drank their blood, leaving only ten alive. Aryyark showed them no mercy, seeing the damage they had wrought upon his men and vessels. He had their throats opened and their bodies laid in a line on the beach, facing the sea.
His own dead he gathered with care. They were buried in a grove of pine and blackthorn above the tide line. Flat stones marked the mounds. Their ascendancy to the Mother would remain unbroken.
Not wishing to linger and risk encountering another relieving force, Aryyark abandoned the burning ship and sailed up the coast to meet his remaining forces at the village. The remaining two were loaded with grain, tools, and supplies from the plundered village. Among the spoils was the third vessel—swift and sturdy, shaped by native hands and taken by force.
With this small fleet, he pressed north along the coast.
For three weeks, they sailed, mapping coves, gathering fruit, and trading when welcomed. The coasts unveiled their strangeness day by day.
Herds of Vos Polnos roamed the upland fields—white elks crowned with antlers ten feet across, marked with branching patterns that resembled the runes of the Valkryn faith. The men forbade the drawing of bow or blade, for in the presence of such creatures, even the most hardened of them fell silent.
In the tidepools, they beheld the Krabourak, crab-shelled beasts the size of children, armored in layers of dark coral and prized for their meat. The locals hunted them in great wooden traps and sang chants to the sea while they boiled them in stone pits by the shore.
Deeper at sea, the Poecampi shimmered beneath the waves—long-bodied, fin-maned, and luminous, like horses crafted from pearl and light. They galloped in schools beneath the hulls of the ships, their forms bending with the surf. Some swam alongside for hours, as if inspecting the strangers from a forgotten kinship. Few were able to ride them, as stallions of the sea.
But the sea held horrors as well.
Some locals they traded with—bearing eyes wide and voices hushed—spoke of the Vori, spirits of the water who called to them in both male and female shape. The men described voices like flutes beneath the surface, songs that promised joy and pursuits of the flesh. One crewman dove from the stern in madness, smiling as he fell. His body was later found upstream, hollow-chested, torn clean where his heart once lay.
Aryyark ordered that no man bathe alone thereafter, in sea or inlet, and torches were lit nightly along the decks. The priests began calling the poison Mother’s Breath, for when lit, the blue fluid drawn from the slain Vori burned atop the ocean and would not yield to wave or rain. Aryyark collected samples and sealed them in brass urns, which would become essential in later wars.
Among the trees of the highland cliffs, they spied a white Inor egret, the first of its kind the men had seen. Its wings bore a white brighter than the sun, and its feathers shimmered as if dusted with stars. It fed on a nest of mineral-rich worms beneath a pale violet outcrop the priests swore was a shard of Godstone, buried from the ancient world.
Aryyark ordered the egret captured alive. When taken, it bowed its head and gave no struggle. He called it Teiusa, goddess in their tongue. The name would later be known in every harbor of the Isles.
From that day forward, the men claimed the voyage bore the mark of divine approval. They hailed the egret as omen and companion, and when it perched upon Aryyark’s shoulder, they spoke of Ornos returned in flesh. The egret would become his symbol, and later daughters of his line would take on the name for its holiness.
He marked the soil as fertile and the sea as bountiful. He saw the wealth of the islands—no silver, but something greater: abundance.
He spoke the name once more: Arkylan.
And the name endured.
The Great Expedition
That winter, as Arryark’s tale spread, Aryon’s banners were raised across every southern province, and those who still believed in the honor of his line assembled. By spring, they had gathered two hundred seventy ships, four thousand men-at-arms, two thousand hired blades, and fourteen thousand sworn levies.
It seemed the campaign was a quiet declaration of loyalties. However, there were certainly as many more whose aim was fortune and fame rather than any display of fidelity to Aryon.
Telion remained still at the impressive gathering, offering no protest, but in the chambers of the court, he grew gaunt and silent. When news reached him of Aryyark’s safe return, he clenched the rim of the royal bowl and cracked its golden edge. To his scribes, he muttered,
“The son too must be diminished, if the crown upon my brow is to remain.”
And so in the spring of 652 DE, the fleet passed into open sea.
Aryon led from the high prow of the Eliuesa—the Mother in Ornosian Skyyic—with his Godstone helm gilded and oath unbroken. Aryyark followed with his captains beside him, and the white egret Teiusa perched upon the masthead. Priests walked the decks reciting old verses at the behest of his wife, Kalypto, the chief priestess. Warriors sang of Ornos and lands beyond the reach of past kings.
It would be a voyage from which Aryyark would never again return.
For many nights, they pressed eastward in good order, their ranks unbroken and their spirits bright. Then, one day, the wind turned.
The sea shifted in weight, frothing in anger. The clouds lowered, first like wool, then like iron. Thunder came in rhythmic pulses, deeper than any storm the seasoned men had known. The navigators marked their charts, but the sky no longer revealed the stars. The sun fell away, covering them in darkness.
The sea rose to swallow them.
The storm approached in silence, stilling the talk of Arryark’s men, then struck with full might. The wind tore the sails into strips. Waves broke hulls into splinters and scattered the formation across the breadth of the Severine Sea.
The fleet split into two.
Aryon was driven northward toward the cliffs, steering through darkness and sleet. Aryyark held to the southern line, leading nearly half the fleet with him, drawing them around the volcanic drift toward the coast where he had first made landfall.
Both emerged alive. Each made landfall on opposite ends of one of the Arkylan Isles.
Aryon came ashore near the high ridges, and though the coastline held, his body weakened. The wounds he had suffered in the sea reopened, the salt deepening their rot. He gave no complaint and made no pause to his men, but those around him saw that the color in his hands faded with each passing day. He held counsel from beneath a pine canopy and gave his final orders by lamplight. When he rose, it was with the aid of two guards, and when he slept, his breath slowed to the pace of old men.
He sent a runner westward with a sealed scroll bearing good news: landfall had been made, the people welcomed them, and the gods had spared the righteous. He included his blessing upon his son and a map marking the shape of the coast.
The messenger reached Arumen. Telion received the scroll in the presence of three court scribes and the high priest.
Telion read none of it aloud.
Instead, he cast the letter into the brazier, fury in his brow. He expected his brother’s demise, not his unlikely success. He could no longer bear his rage.
To mold fate in his favor, he summoned his own scribes. They penned a message in Aron’s name declaring madness. They wrote of Aron’s supposed wild visions, claims of divine kingship, and vows to burn Arumen to the ground upon his return.
They read this forgery before the court. Telion stood weeping and asked for the strength to shield the people from his brother’s delusion. He claimed his brother had fallen mad because he had found no grand Arkylan Isles, just a few clumps of sand.
The hall held silence, but no man believed him, even those loyal to Telion.
Within five days, a second ship arrived from Aryon’s fleet, bearing plundered gold and spices, gifts for the realm, and news of safe harbor. The nobles looked to one another, murmuring of Telion’s deception.
Hearing this, Telion dismissed them all, trembling with fear and rage.
That night, he ordered a purge.
Telion banished anyone who had once dined with Aryon. He stripped lands from old vassals and seized their sons into the palace guard. He questioned even the temple, striking out the names of elder priests and forbidding their rites. Many were forced upon ships to leave for Tevya, and just as many were executed on baseless and vague accusations of treason.
Arumen grew lean from this carnage. Soon, its markets slowed, and its harbor stood silent.
In the Arkylan Isles, Aryon lingered three weeks.
The fever rose into his chest and dimmed the light in his eyes. His voice turned hoarse. He lay beneath a roof of cypress and linen, breathing salt and smoke. When word came of Telion’s falsehood—of the forged scrolls, the banishments, and the slaughter of those who bore his name—he stirred in holy vengeance. He rose, called for his sword, and declared his wish to return and depose the oath-breaker. Yet his strength had grown faint. The fire in his limbs gave way to cold, and the strength that once carried him across the mountains now could barely lift his hand.
Only hours after the news reached him, he passed unto the arms of the Mother. His heart carried sorrow, and his eyes held no peace.
Aryyark received the news in the dusk of the twelfth day. The fire beside him burned low as he kept still for many hours. Kalypto, his wife and chief priestess of the Valrok Order, knelt beside him and offered no word. He took her hand in silence. Together they watched the sea, and they remained until the sun slipped beneath the horizon.
The next morning, Aryyark raised the banner of his house over the high ridge. There he swore before his captains, his gods, and the gathered clans of the fleet: he would honor his father’s charge, and he would not return to Arumen.
The Mother sent justice swiftly regardless, though not by Aryyark’s hand.
The throne of Arumen, once crowned in falsehood, now buckled beneath its own weight. The purge had sundered all trust amongst nobles and commoners. The merchants turned their ships to other ports. The grain harvest spoiled. Famine crept into the countryside, and the blood that Telion had spilled returned to him in full measure.
A rival kingdom crossed the northern border, hungry for Arumen’s weakened state. The Arkosians entered without parley, striking the fractured legions in the open field. Telion gathered what remained and marched in haste, but found no loyalty in the marshals and no clarity in the gods. He was defeated, stripped of crown and vestments, and slain upon the banks of a river, his body left to rot.
The Arkosians raised Telion’s son upon the throne and bound the realm beneath their seal. From that hour, Arumen bore the yoke of foreign rule.
And so the last bond was severed to Arumen.
With Telion’s line fallen and no kin remaining in the west, Aryyark stood free of the past. The sea opened before him, and the Arkylan Isles called, along with the many great islands to the north.
He turned his gaze inland to conquer.
The Conquest of the Isles
The southern peoples, scattered and sundered by old rivalries, had once warred for salt and timber, for rain-rights and river-mouths. But in the wake of Arryark’s arrival, their strength had divided as tribes turned on one another and refused to fight together. With the Arkylan subdued, he looked to the next grouping of islands: the Knosa.
They were the next to weep at his coming.
The Knosian clans lay scattered along the reefs and cliffs of the southern coast. They lived in watchtowers and hollowed stones, their warriors painted in sea-ash, their rites steeped in the tongue of Ornos long forgotten. Their chiefs raised spears in greeting, then in defiance.
Aryyark landed at the bay of his first arrival and formed his line. The Knosian watched in silence. They saw the plate of Godstone, forged from the blood of the gods, which no weapon pierced. They saw the knights who rode behind him, few in number yet cloaked in the same unbreakable ore.
At the first engagement, the Knosian loosed a thousand arrows from their cliff-bows, and every shaft fell broken. The charge that followed split the defenders and scattered their drums, for none could withstand Aryyark and his men, whose Bludh plate sent fear unto their hearts. The tribes fled to higher ground, letting Aryyark press inland.
By dusk, their resistance had fallen, and Knosian was fully his.
Kalypto walked among the surrendered islanders. As she delivered water and balm, she let her Godstone knife be seen by the savage peoples to instill fear and reverence in them. Her voice rose in the old tongue, and she proclaimed the fulfillment of the Ornos prophecy.
She named Aryyark “Thyna,” the Holy Servant whom the islanders prophesied would come. When the elders heard it, they bowed.
The island of Myrtha stood next.
Its fishermen offered tribute, and its priests sent word by sail: they would yield if their temple remained standing. Aryyark entered by sea, marched through the marsh paths, and came before the temple in silence. He raised no torch and gave no order to burn. He walked beneath its arches and raised his banner at the altar. The high priest wept and laid his chain across Aryyark’s hands. The Isles of Myrtha gave themselves into his keeping, though they suffered not the bloodshed that had befallen Knosa. Their close neighboring islands of Varro, Lyraea, and Tyr gave similar tribute, for such was the holy fear he spread amongst them.
At last came Skyya, which he yearned for the most.
The people of Skyya built no walls. They gathered their strength in numbers, drums, and ancestral rites. Their warriors fought in circles, chanting through the night and hammering bronze against their shields. Their oaths were old, and their chiefs remembered the name Ornos. They would stand defiant, unlike the others.
Aryyark came in daylight, with the Godstone helm upon his brow. His knights rode in three ranks across the black sands, and the ash-banner flew high above them. The Skyyan chiefs gave a final cry, and the tribes advanced in waves to their deaths. Their blades met holy ichor that would not shatter. Their fires met shields that held no scorch.
The field ran red before the sun reached its zenith.
On the third day, Aryyark entered the central mound and stood atop the pyramid place of their sacrifices—their capital—which he would later name Aryon in tribute to his father. The last chieftain laid down his horn and kissed the ground before him, trembling at the blood dripping from Arryark’s Godstone sword and Kalypto’s holy knife, which promised his sacrifice should he resist. Teiusa descended and landed on Arryark’s shoulder as a sign that Ornos had come again.
It was there that the last chieftain praised Aryyark as the Ornos reincarnate, saying,
“Nela Arros Teiuesa
Euliel Elu im Esa
Ivei Ultimos Ornos
Kaellio Cos Iloneii
Pei Otimei
Etha maevela
Meyron solleth
Aralun meir
Teiuesa Viraen
Pelon kaellun
Tharai irel
Ilai Vireth’on
Nelos Vos Polnos
Velan eyl.
Vion elthalas
Naen pelun eira
Veylun tharai ila
Thalos valen meir
Taraen pelai teiruneth
Felun solnael feleith.”
As he spoke, the priests of the Mother poured oil on the brow of Aryyark, now Aryarcus in Skyyan, which was the most powerful of the islands until he arrived. At this sight, the people sang the prophecy, bowing in reverence before their lord.
Kalypto raised his hand and spoke to the islanders, understanding it by Her spirit:
“Praise Holy Mother,
Hail Valiant Ornos
Uniter Of Isles
He Binds.
You Have Passed
We have Broken
We Sorrow.
Mother Have Mercy
Send Us Another
We Wait.
Here He Cometh
Upon White Ship
He Sails.
O Hand of the Sea
Doth not drown out me
For I sail to thee
Oceans strike with glee
Save Thine servant Lord
I pray You restore.”
While Aryyark and Kalypto placed little stock in foreign prophecies in the beginning, it nevertheless did not dissuade them that Aryyark was the fulfillment of it. And so Aryyark embraced his new name as Aryarcus Thyna, and in time, even Kalypto would believe it was her husband’s destiny to rule over all the islands, for thus far he had been victorious in every way that had been prophesied.
So ended the long wandering of the House of Aryon, and rose the House of Thyna, the First Sovereign of the Arkylan dominion, the Second Ornos, the Uniter of Isles.