Everything written here is fiction, but the beginning is heavily based on the biblical world flood, using even Noah's son's name of Japeth, and after that, it leaps into pure fantasy and creative license.

In the beginning, the Maker created the Earth, and it was good. But then sin entered the world through the deception of the morrs. Over time, humans became so corrupted—worshiping the morrs and sacrificing each other to them—that the Maker declared it enough. He flooded the entire Earth, wiping out all living things that had the breath of life, except for one family that had found favor in His eyes, for they still served Him as God.

This family became the ancestors of all who came after, including the Delnor people. Like all who had lived before the flood, they became known as "Diluvians" by future generations.

After the Great Deluge (2348 BC), the generations multiplied quickly from the three sons of that family. From Japeth came his son Delnor, who was born as a Diluvian in the year 2378 BC. He was a child on the ark at age 30—considered a child by biblical standards at the time—and was 31 when he exited the ark.

Delnor went on to establish a kingdom, naming it Dellavein after his wife, in the year 2300 BC—forty-eight years after the Great Deluge. He became king, and his people came to be known as the Delnor. In just one generation, the kingdom grew into an empire, which was later ruled by Delnor’s son, King Strightus (born 2284 BC). Strightus ascended the throne in 2078 BC at the age of 206.

King Strightus upheld the faith of his great-grandfather and father, further establishing his people’s worship of the Maker as the one true God. However, his zeal to follow in their footsteps caused him to neglect his own son, Shadden.

At this time, the Earth became frozen in a partial ice age due to the recent global flood, as the waters had cooled the planet. The ice concealed the fact that the land beneath it had been fractured by the floodwaters, which had gushed forth from the depths of the Earth. The Great Deluge had split apart the supercontinent of Pangea, cracking it into tectonic plates.

No one anticipated what was to come next—that the land would soon begin to drift and tear apart into separate continents.

Let’s take a step back before we unravel what happened next with the changing world. While King Delnor ruled as the first king of his people, competing empires also rose to power, such as Egypt (2294 BC) and Babylon (2231 BC). These empires were established by the other brother’s children, each forming their own cultures as powerful nations. To these empires, the morrs went and enticed them to worship them as gods.

These morrs were the same demonic spirits that had opposed Elëázar from the start of sin on Earth, aiming to divert humanity’s loyalty and thwart them out of their God-given right to eternal life. King Delnor had also been tempted by the morrs in these days, for they offered any mortal—including him—the use of their magic should he worship them. But King Delnor remained faithful to Elëázar.

Elëázar blessed the king’s people with what is today known as the Delnor Senses (senses that go beyond the five every human is born with). Some Delnor could now communicate with animals, others could dream the future, and there were even some who could persuade others to do or feel anything. These supernatural senses were given to aid them against magical attacks.

The Delnor knew that Elëázar was the Maker who had created the Earth, which they called Terra, and that He created everything—spirits such as the morrs and all of mankind. To keep their distance from the morrs, who had fallen from good spirits to evil, the Delnor relinquished much land to Babylon and Egypt and relocated to the North, an area now known as Europe. At that time, Europe was far grander in size, having more land than the continent exists today. It was known as The Lands of Dellavein, named after the Delnor’s empire.

Time passed, and King Delnor passed his throne to his son, King Strightus. While King Strightus reigned, his son grew impatient to become king (for they all lived for a few hundred years back then). At the age of thirty-five (1965 BC), Shadden asked his father for the throne early. However, his father, knowing his son’s heart was evil, denied him, hoping to raise up his younger brother, Etharan, to take the throne instead.

Shadden, aware of his father’s plan, tricked his brother into meeting an Egyptian woman (without telling him she was not a Delnor, as marriage outside their people was forbidden). His brother fell in love and married her. King Strightus never learned of his younger son’s marriage, nor did he know that she was Egyptian, because Shadden convinced his brother to marry her in secret, claiming that since she was a commoner, their marriage would be forbidden anyway.

While his brother was eloping, Shadden killed their father (King Strightus was three hundred and nineteen years old) and seized the throne as the eldest son. When Etharan heard of this, he was horrified. Yet, being a meek person, he stayed away, too afraid that returning to the castle with his new bride would be seen as a challenge for the throne.

Shadden, who had secretly been dabbling in magic through the spirit that had been tempting him with ideas of how to become king early, was once again approached by this spirit. It convinced him to not only integrate himself but also the other morrs into the Delnor belief system—and, of course, to embrace magic. Shadden not only welcomed the morrs' ideas but made Mortifer, one of the morrs, his personal god, placing him above the gods of Dellavein.

Some Delnor opposed his reign because he had killed his father, but with so many of his army accepting magic, the best their Delnor Senses could do was help them avoid being caught and killed for opposing him—and for continuing to worship the Maker, as Shadden had issued a decree that banned the worship of Elëázar.

While Shadden reigned, the ice began to melt as the Earth started to thaw in the year 2070 BC. Without the ice, the land was no longer held together as one mass. The cracks in Terra began to reveal themselves, and the Lands of Dellavein began to tear apart over the next seventy years. Shadden feared losing his land, but when he asked his morr-god, Mortifer, he found that Mortifer was not powerful enough to stop the land from separating. The shaking and splitting continued, and when Shadden lost nearly a quarter of his empire to the new sea, he realized he had no choice but to beseech the Maker, the God of his father. A God powerful enough to flood the world was clearly strong enough to save it.

Shadden knew, however, that the Maker was not pleased with him, and that he had nothing to offer in return. The morrs longed for human worship, for without it, they were not gods but demoted spirits. But the Maker remained God, regardless of whether humans worshiped Him or not. So, Shadden remembered those who had opposed him and still followed the Maker. He decided to barter their lives to the Maker, promising not to harm them if the Maker fulfilled his request and stopped the lands from splitting and sinking into the sea.

So, Shadden called on Elëázar by name, asking Him to preserve the lands of Dellavein, and Elëázar answered. He would save the lands, but not because Shadden asked, nor because Shadden made false and wicked promises to spare lives that were not his to take in the first place. It would be for his father's sake and for those who continued to worship Him faithfully, despite Shadden teaching them about the morrs and making laws forbidding it.

However, there was a catch. The Maker told Shadden that He would preserve the Lands of Dellavein by placing them into a new dimension—a second world that would be a duplicate of the current world, born from its yew tree in the Planes Between the Worlds. Its name would be Evynlore, and though it was born from the yew tree of Terra, it would have its own tree in the Planes Between the Worlds: an oak tree. It would continue separately from Terra, a new world where the land would remain in its current formation, partly torn but no longer continuing to tear. The catch was that Shadden would have to leave behind the morrs and magic. Although he saw this as punishment, it was, in fact, the Maker offering him a chance for freedom and the potential renewal of his soul.

The Maker's requirement was that the morrs would not be allowed into Evynlore. The Maker told Shadden this because He knew Shadden knew the spell to summon Mortifer, and that the spell would work in Evynlore should he cast it. If the king broke this agreement, Elëázar warned, it would bring about the future destruction of both worlds, as well as the imminent death of Shadden. Shadden agreed to the covenant, for as they spoke, the Earth shook, and his castle, sitting on the edge of the new sea, was about to fall into it. In that instant, the shaking stopped. When Shadden walked outside, the air was not cold as it normally was. He still saw snow and ice, but there was a breeze from the west, promising thawed-out land, perhaps even land with forests. And it was so. Elëázar had not only made a new world for them, but also built a great city called Jebel and filled it with all the provisions the Delnor people would need to start their new lives in prosperity, in a lush green land to the west of Dellavein Castle.

Not even one full set of seasons had come and gone before Shadden went back on his word. An entire world had been given to him, freedom from his gods, and the Maker had not killed him for murdering his father, but instead had given him a chance to be the king he should be, to lead his people to serve the Maker. All of this, and yet Shadden was not satisfied. For without Mortifer, he had no magic and felt unimportant, unable to control his people if he didn't have great power to make them fear him. He felt like an equal to his people, and he hated that. He had nearly been considering declaring himself a god before the lands started to split apart, and this had to happen.

I should mention here that Shadden was married to a woman named Neara, and had his own children. His firstborn was a son, whom he named Natheteron (born 1598 BC), followed by a daughter named Lahtaynia (1593 BC), then a second son named Gesemeron (1585 BC), and lastly a second daughter named Sohkatôa (1579 BC).

So, how did Shadden break his covenant with the Maker? You probably guessed it. He performed the summoning spell, which involved creating twelve stone structures placed at specific locations in the new world. These structures would connect to the old world, and at the portal in the heart of his new forests, he placed a sacrificial table. He drugged his eldest son with the sleeping plant Nightcap, brought him to the altar, and cut his wrists, bleeding him upon it while calling out for Mortifer. This action opened all the portals he had created, connecting the worlds again while they remained open, binding his son's blood to the portals.

What Shadden did not intend to do was open a rift to the spiritual no-man’s-land, the Elysian Fields, also known as the Planes Between the Worlds. It was a doorway not only to other worlds but also to the lands of eternity, the dead, and the dwelling places of the morrs. Shadden's ritual worked: Mortifer was able to walk from Earth, through the Planes Between the Worlds, and enter Evynlore. However, as he passed through the Planes Between the Worlds, five other morrs, curious about the peculiar ringing sound, saw the cave under the oak tree in the Planes—which belonged to Evynlore—and that the cave beneath it had opened and they followed Mortifer into the newest world.

Near instantly, one of the morrs killed Shadden, unaware that he had summoned their kin into the world. There was nothing Mortifer could do then. Though he was the god of the dead, he could not give back a mortal their life.

The six morrs then turned to the unconscious but still alive victim, bleeding out on the altar stone, discussing whether they should kill him too. They reasoned that he was likely the prince, and since Mortifer had told them they had killed the king of this world, they supposed that if they killed him as well, they might rule the world without the need for an ambassador of the race beneath them. However, when Acoosh, a devilish stone-goblin, went to smash the prince's head with his fists, a sphere of light protected the prince. Mortifer was not the only morr familiar with the Maker's spirit, and they recognized that the prince was under the Maker’s protection, so they left him there.

A few of the morrs did not get along with one another, so they spread out and decided that each would take a section of the world for themselves.

Prince Natheteron took the throne and became king in 1440 BC but felt that the world should be split between him and his siblings, as well as his siblings' children, to prevent it from ever being entirely ruled by one tyrant again. Believing the older generation deserved a larger portion of authority, the world was divided into four kingdom realms. Natheteron and his siblings were called the High Kings and Queens, and their oldest firstborns would inherit the title and authority. The other children would be given delegation over smaller kingdom-provinces within the realms to rule. Thus, Evynlore was split into twelve kingdoms.

There would have been fourteen kingdoms, but two children of King Natheteron’s sister, Sohkatôa, died in 1375 BC, thirty-five years into King Natheteron’s reign, before the land delegation was completed. Dividing the lands took forty years. It was due to her eldest son, Jaiphus (born 1514 BC), that the delegation turned into a war. Because his mother passed before the delegation was finished, Jaiphus not only wanted his mother's realm but also aimed to challenge the others for all of Evynlore. He was willing to side with the morrs and wage war against King Natheteron and his family.

Close to five years passed, and the realm of Sohkatôa fell into disarray under Jaiphus's rule. When Seaphus, Jaiphus’s youngest brother, learned that his brother planned to take over all of Evynlore, he opposed it. Seaphus secretly created a society called the Silver Swan Society to place checks and balances on any ruling royalty, particularly his brother. Though this wasn’t illegal, Jaiphus ordered Seaphus’s execution for giving bread from the King’s Cart to a starving beggar child. Technically, the bread didn’t belong to Seaphus, as no kingdom had yet been given to him, and his brother used this small law to condemn him.

That night, before Seaphus’s planned execution, Elëázar sent him a dream showing the future through his Delnor Sense. Elëázar had a malakh (a spirit race similar to the morrs, but a malakh is one who remained good, serving the Maker) show Seaphus what would happen in the future, all the way to the end of Evynlore’s timeline. Seaphus was also able to go back in time within the dream and witness the beginning of Evynlore and Shadden’s sin. The malakh told Seaphus that a descendant of Shadden, through his son King Natheteron, would be the ramification of Shadden’s sin. There would come a child who would bring peace and freedom from the curse of the morrs and the impending convergence of the worlds. Seaphus was instructed to write down the prophecy when he woke, for it would bring hope to all future generations. He was to give the prophecy to his sparrow, Twill, a kindine animal. Through this chosen descendant, Evynlore would be led back to serving the Maker, magic would be cast out, the morrs would be bound in the abyss, and a time of peace would come to the world.

So Seaphus wrote the prophecy on twelve scrolls, recording all he had seen throughout the fields of time.

This is where Book One picks up the story, as Seaphus sits in a small cabin in the woods, writing the prophecy on the twelve scrolls. He knows that the work of his quill will be his last toil in this life, for the Maker told him that once the prophecy was written, He would come and take Seaphus up to the Kingdom of Empyrean. The Maker would not allow Jaiphus to execute Seaphus for doing what was right.

After Seaphus's departure from Evynlore to the ethereal kingdom, Jaiphus wages war against his uncle, King Natheteron (1370 BC). He attempts to turn the people against Natheteron by claiming, "As long as Natheteron's blood exists, the portals will bring about the convergence of the worlds and destroy us all!" This half-truth (for banishing the morrs would prevent the convergence, in place of the killing the king) begins to sway the weak and ill-informed. But the Maker intervenes. He appears to King Natheteron and blesses his blood, ensuring that no one but those of his own bloodline can kill him (and Natheteron has righteous children). As a result, when Jaiphus strikes, his blade has no effect, and King Natheteron is able to defeat him, bringing the war to an end. The kingdom of Sohkatôa (Jaiphus's mother's realm) is given to his brother, Wease, the next in line to inherit it.

In secret, the Maker tells King Natheteron that he must visit the altar stone each season to renew his blessed blood. This is because on another altar stone, the Maker’s son will one day pour out His own blood to break every curse— including the one that Natheteron’s father, Shadden, brought upon him by binding his blood to the portals. The Maker instructs Natheteron, and his descendants, to remember what He did for them by touching the altar stone, passing on the blessing through each generation.

Although the morrs remain in Evynlore, the rest of King Natheteron's reign is peaceful. It takes the morrs thousands of years to devise their greatest plan: to bring all of Evynlore under the control of Mortifer, the most powerful of them all. They may even attempt to thwart the prophecy by bringing the promised heir of Natheteron under their control—though you'll have to read the books to find out.