But where there is light, ambition casts a long shadow. Humanity, in its burgeoning empires, learned to harness the flow of magic. They became the Ten Great Kingdoms, their power defined by their proximity to the ley lines. Mages, who once were healers and seers, became architects and warlords. They built higher, delved deeper, and their hunger grew with their knowledge. They saw the endless cycle not as a sacred balance, but as a waste. Why should a lifetime of accumulated power, of genius and memory, be surrendered to the void?
The most powerful among them, a cabal known as the Architects of Eternity, conceived of the ultimate heresy: to sever the cycle. They would capture the process of passage, halt the soul's journey, and harness its raw, transitioning energy to achieve apotheosis a state of immortal, undying power. They sought not to live forever in harmony, but to rule forever in dominance.
For generations, they theorized that the Grim were not mere phantoms, but entities that could be made manifest and subdued. Their breakthrough was the Cube of Ossian, a construct of void-forged iron and frozen silence. It did not create magic, but rather, it created an absolute null-field, a pocket of non-existence where magical laws ceased to function. Their plan was audacious: to use the Cube to force a Grim into corporeal form and, in that moment of vulnerable tangibility, overwhelm it.