The Age of Fragments

A dream-haunted scholar in the Ember Compact receives a waking vision from Vaelith of the Broken Moon. The vision: the original binding words, spoken backward. The scholar writes them down before forgetting. The Compact immediately seeks to verify whether the words can undo the Fracturing — or make it permanent.

Sorin Waystone locates the lost Primer of Keth-Solas — a text describing the original Threadweaving — buried beneath the Archive foundation stone. The first page describes the method for detecting Harmonic Dissonance. The Assembly immediately restricts access to rank seven and above.

Sorin Waystone of the Crystalline Assembly performs the first successful Shard-Binding on himself, fusing a Void Shard to his left arm. The procedure takes seven days, costs the lives of three assistants, and leaves him permanently attuned to Void resonance. He begins his search for the Primer of Keth-Solas.

Korrath — now ancient and known as Korrath the Unburned — extracts the Void Blade from a Shard in the Chasm of Echoes. In doing so he inadvertently kills twelve Hollows with a single swing, proving the blade can destroy Void-touched beings. Both the Covenant and Assembly seek to acquire it. He refuses both.

A roving Obsidian Covenant expedition finds the Fracture Compass in a sealed vault beneath a destroyed Archonate outpost. The device reactivates upon contact with void energy, confirming what the Covenant has long suspected: the Void is not random. It is searching.

The factions are on the brink. The Covenant believes the Void can be harnessed to rebuild the world. The Assembly believes it can be rewoven. The Compact believes it should be allowed to complete its work. And somewhere in seventeen Shards, Vaelith waits.