She opened her eyes to candles guttering and the smell of old paper. The room was quiet except for the sound of her own breathing. Three days alone had given her time she couldn't waste. She sat up and pulled a blanket tighter around her shoulders. Then she began to sort the world in her head — simple facts, pieces of power she would use.
The sun here was wrong. It was called the Black Meridian. It gave light, but that light was dying. The Meridian's last breaths made magic possible, and that magic fed on life. The more anyone used it, the faster the world wore away.
People had learned to draw on the dying sun long ago. They built empires with its ash and its power. The biggest of those empires was the Meridianate Empire — a machine state that burned Meridian ash to run engines, weapons, and armies. Around it, land had died: forests withered, rivers turned sour, towns fell into shadowed sickness. The empire kept its strength by letting the world rot.
