Canticles of a World Left Behind
Canticles of a World Left Behind unfolds in the aftermath of a world that did not end cleanly or conclusively, but instead moved on without resolving what came before.
The story follows Rhaen, a man displaced from his origin and from his own understanding, first travelling through the Emberwake's harsh, mineral-scarred land where ancient systems persist beneath newer civilizations. These systems are not romantic ruins, but infrastructure: foundations, roads, stabilizers, and mechanisms built to endure long enough to be forgotten. Civilization has not destroyed them; it has layered over them, reused them, and learned to function without understanding their purpose.
As Rhaen moves forward, he passes through societies defined not by virtue or corruption, but by continuity. Institutions exist to preserve motion rather than meaning-roads to carry bodies, guilds to distribute risk, magic to correct failure rather than inspire awe. Power is not mythologized; it is compartmentalized, expressed only where function demands it. Skill is common, but authorship is diffuse. Actions are absorbed and forgotten unless they fit the system's language.
Rhaen exists at the edge of these structures. He understands weight, alignment, and endurance intuitively, but lacks the symbols and identity required to belong. He acts without recognition, observes without inclusion, and continues not because he is summoned, but because the world leaves spaces where something was never finished.
The story's direction moves steadily away from civilization and toward Elsewhere-toward ancient mechanisms indifferent to modern order, and forces built for purposes larger than survival. It is not a tale of heroic discovery, but of confrontation: between a world that has learned to make power small and a past that was never meant to be contained.
