~ 50,000 BCE
In this era, early humans had emerged fully from the long shadow of their ancestors. On which tribes became villages, and nomads became settlers.
The fire, water, wind, and elementals became easily controlled, and food is abundant due to the help of the Sigils. And with every generation, Sigils became more than a strange phenomenon.
They became expected as children were now born with marks etched on their skin... From lines, loops, spirals, jagged scars of light, and soft pulses in the shape of strange symbols.
Unlike in the past, these Sigils no longer killed at birth. Most were dormant until early childhood, though some sparked to life through emotion, pain, or danger.
The age of wild and unpredictable power was ending. This was the beginning of stability.
Across the continents, scattered tribes began to shape their entire lives around the presence of Sigils; some even worshipped them.
They did not yet understand them, but they feared and revered them all the same. Some carved the glyphs into totems, recreating the patterns of their ancestors' marks.
Others painted them on cave walls in mixtures of blood and ash. The oldest surviving stone structures bear the same spiral forms and geometric glyphs seen on the bodies of the earliest Sigilbearers, preserved in time.
These markings became their culture...
Power began to define hierarchy among people. A hunter with a strength Sigil would become the protector of the clan.
A healer who could heal wounds and stop bleeding in an instant would be treated as a saint. Some bore Sigils of illusions and were seen as prophets.
Others could create fire without a flint and were seen as divine. Tribes began to form mythologies around Sigilbearers, praising them and giving them titles.
Not all Sigils were blessings. Some brought sickness, nightmares, misfortune, and destruction. Those bearers were feared, often driven into exile or ritually bound.
Others tried to stay hidden; however, the people still found them. Over generations, they started to understand which Sigils helped them and which ones brought them ruin.
This instinctual classification gave rise to the earliest forms of Sigil knowledge, passed by word, gesture, and tradition.
Meanwhile, deep in untouched regions of the world, the unnatural still lingered.
The Glyphspawns... Beasts that were warped by the Breach...
Had not vanished but survived by hiding, breeding, and evolving in places where glyphic energy was strongest.
The people called these places different names depending on their region, but the meaning was always the same: cursed lands, death land, forbidden grounds, and so on.
These became known as Forbidden Territories; one must not cross.
In these territories, plants grew in the wrong directions and had dark, strange colors. Some Animals became grotesque, as they had many limbs, many eyes, or none at all.
Some creatures mimicked humans. Others screamed like them. A few walked on two legs and carried weapons made of bone.
The longer a person stayed in such a place, the more their mind began to slip. Some came back changed and were never the same. Others never came back at all...
Still, the world moved forward.
By the latter part of this age, humans had settled into wide territories. Agriculture began to flourish. Walls were built. Languages developed.
And with language came the first written attempts to record Sigils. Primitive symbols carved into stone tablets or painted on cave walls began to resemble the actual marks found on human bodies.
These early records were not meant to explain the powers. They were meant to remember the early history of Sigils.
Some cultures began marking the births of Sigilbearers in ritual ceremonies. Others tattooed mimic Sigils onto warriors to try and fake power.
Some even believed Sigils could be stolen from the dead, leading to gruesome traditions of flaying or ritual sacrifice. These beliefs gave rise to both miracles and monstrosities. Even in peace, fear lingered.
In time, a pattern became clear.
Sigils were now appearing at or just after birth. The marks were still random, but they were no longer entirely unpredictable.
Entire bloodlines began producing Sigils of similar functions—fire, wind, strength, speed, shadow, and many more.
Though still unique in form, the powers hinted at heredity. Some families began to track the marks across generations, slowly realizing that Sigils could be passed down in weakened or altered forms.
And with this came another truth: not all Sigils were created equal.
Some were small and weak from simple sensory tricks, producing flame sparks to minor body enhancements.
Others were devastating, altering the world around the user with ease. With a simple wave of a hand, one could erase lands with a devastating beam, controlling multiple people at once to a power that could resurrect the dead.
These differences became the prime reason for Sigil hierarchy—the earliest divisions of rankings.
On which individuals with simple low low-ranking Sigils were ostracized and shunned by higher-ranking ones.
The age of survival had ended. The age of civilizations had begun.
.....
Again, time passes...
And so the Sigilic Wars happened...
~3000 BCE
The world had united under firelight, then fractured under power.
Civilization was no longer a scattered collection of clans. The first great cities had risen: Uruk, Memphis, Persepolis, Athens, Chang'an.
Stones that are now turned into walls. Tools turned to iron and bronze. And at the heart of every kingdom, every rising empire, were the Sigils.
These were no longer mysterious blessings; they were now banners of conquest, weapons of faith and war, and instruments of law.
This was the age when power became law. Sigils were the sharpest law of all.
And a ruler that has the most powerful Sigil of all of them...
Across the world, new empires were shaped not only by their armies or architects but by the marks that lived within the flesh of their leaders.
In Mesopotamia, Sigil-seers spoke to the gods through living flame. The ziggurats they built were not merely places of worship. They were sites where Sigils were trained, enhanced, and judged.
In Egypt, the Pharaohs bore the Sun-Sigil, said to be passed through a sacred bloodline untouched since the Breach. They were not just rulers. They were walking infernos. Golden light bled from their skin during the ceremony.
One of the first SSS-ranks on the battlefield, they could scorch entire warbands with searing rays from their hands. Some believed they did not die but ascended.
In the West, Greece and Rome gave rise to living legends. The gods they worshipped—Zeus, Athena, Hades, and Ares were not gods at all.
They were high-ranking Sigilbearers, individuals so powerful they bent reality in ways that inspired generations of worship.
Gladiators in Roman arenas clashed not only with swords but with flame, wind, shadow, and force. Lawmakers, generals, and emperors were often chosen for their marks, not their minds.
To the East, China's dynasties built their power on ancestral Sigils. These were Dragonblood marks bound to imperial lineage. Their powers were tied to elements, often manifesting as serpentine constructs of flame, lightning, ice, or wind.
The dragon was no metaphor. It was tradition made flesh, a symbol of cosmic balance and raw power. The imperial heirs were trained from birth to master their Sigils or risk being replaced.
And across all these empires, there was one divine treasure: Glyphic Wells.
These were rare sites of concentrated energy, ancient reservoirs where remnants of the Celestial Breach still pulsed beneath the surface of the world.
No one fully understood them, but all sought to control them. Some believed they were divine conduits left behind by the gods.
Others claimed they were wounds in the world that had never truly healed. Whatever the truth, one thing was certain—they held the power to shape destiny.
Glyphic Wells amplified Sigils. Those who trained near them grew faster, stronger, more precise in their mastery. For some, exposure was the spark that unlocked Sigil evolution more faster, allowing their powers to reach the next stage.
Warriors, seers, and rulers traveled across continents in secret pilgrimages, hoping to awaken their next evolution through the Glyphic Wells.
But power always came with a price.
The Wells did not gift strength freely. Overexposure to their energy risked a catastrophic reaction—Sigilburn.
If a bearer drew in too much, their Sigil could overload, pushing beyond the limits of what the body could endure.
Some were crippled. Others were incinerated from within. There were whispers of those whose bodies were torn apart by their own powers, their Sigils flaring too brightly before vanishing in silence.
So the Wells became battlegrounds...
Entire wars were fought not over land or gold but for control of these sacred fonts. Cities rose atop them, then shattered into glass and ash.
Kingdoms soared and crumbled in a single generation. The Wells pulsed with silent hunger, and the world bled to feed them.
And in that bleeding, something stirred.
Glyphspawn activity surged...
Wherever the Wells were opened, the Glyphspawns followed. Twisted remnants of creatures from the Breach, they were drawn to the energy like flies to carrion.
Some came in waves, breaking through cities like floods of fangs and bone. Others appeared alone and massive, grotesque things with Sigil-warped bodies and unnatural minds
There are records of entire armies vanishing without a scream. Not defeated but consumed. Survivors told of corrupted landscapes, forests that moved like lungs, beasts that spoke in broken human tongues, and skies that rained light.
Some scholars would later name these places Sigilblight Zones, areas where the Wells had cracked too wide and allowed something else to seep through.
The greatest empires began building Sigil Orders, elite groups of trained Sigilbearers tasked with sealing breaches, fighting Glyphspawn, and guarding Wells.
These were precursors to what modern Sigil academies would one day become. But these Orders were often corrupted, torn apart from within, or wiped out entirely.
This age ended not with peace but exhaustion...
As the classical empires waned, the Wells went quiet. The Glyphspawn withdrew into the forbidden zones. For the first time in centuries, the world exhaled.
But the scars remained. Across continents, you can still find ancient ruins with Sigils scorched into their stones. Wells buried under sand, sealed in obsidian, hidden in jungle temples. Whispers of gods, dragons, and monsters that were never myths.
They were all real. The wars proved one truth. Sigils could shape the world. But they could also break it... So a proof to the testament... Is The Emergence...