The room darkened.
The priestess closed the doors herself, drawing the heavy wood shut until the sounds of the temple faded into memory. Lamps were extinguished one by one, until only a single low flame remained at the centre of the chamber.
"History," she said, "is best told when the present steps aside."
She raised her hand.
Magic flowed—not in a surge, but in a practiced, economical stream. The air thickened, light bending inward. The walls dissolved first, then the shelves, then even the floor beneath their feet.
They were standing under an open sky.
Clear. Vast. Unbroken.
"This is illusion magic," the priestess said, her voice carrying easily. "Not projection. Not deception. Memory, given shape."
The land around them stretched endlessly—green plains, rivers untouched by stone embankments, forests too dense to walk through. Magicules were everywhere, drifting freely like pollen in sunlight.
Tolstoy let out a low breath. "That's… a lot."
"Yes," the priestess replied. "This was Gilbert."
Grey narrowed his eyes. "Before faith."
"Before necessity" she corrected.
The illusion widened.
The priestess's hand remained raised, fingers steady, as the world around them shifted. they didn't go forward in time, but outward in scope. The land beneath their feet pulled away until they were no longer standing in history, but observing it from just far enough to breathe.
"Gilbert," she said softly, "was never meant to be unified."
The land divided.
Forests rose first. They were vast and layered canopies glowing with ambient magic. There were streams of magicules flowing through the trees making nets of them. Cities grew among the branches, living structures shaped in them rather than built.
"Elves," the priestess said. "They were the first to listen to the world instead of trying to command it."
Figures moved among the trees, tall and deliberate, their magic subtle and precise.
The scene shifted.
Plains stretched wide beneath open skies. Rivers were diverted. Stone was cut, stacked, reshaped into cities that favoured function over harmony.
"Humans," she continued. "We were Adaptable. Dangerous in number."
They watched generations rise and fall in the span of breaths. Magic was used here as tool, not reverence. The humans used it freely without any system.
Then the land darkened.
Mountains split open, revealing cavernous halls where massive figures worked stone with their bare hands. Their magic was heavy—gravitational, rooted, stubborn.
"Trolls," the priestess said. "Born of endurance. Magic to them was not expression, but pressure."
"They were never seen above land and outside their mountains. Unlike their appearance, they were quite the reserved folk."
The princess flicked her wrist. The air grew hotter.
The final land was not mapped—it asserted itself. Ash plains. Crimson skies. Spires that pierced reality itself.
"And Demons," she said, voice tightening just slightly. "Those who did not draw magic from the world… but imposed it."
Faker felt it then—the imbalance. Even in illusion, the magicules around the demon lands warped, bent inward like iron toward a lodestone.
Tolstoy frowned. "That doesn't feel natural."
"It wasn't," the priestess replied. "But Gilbert tolerated it. For a time."
The illusion shifted again. Hidden cities somewhere in the realm, within forgotten orders and sealed halls, figures gathered in silence.
"High-Humans," the priestess said. "Their magic was… precise. Artificially refined. Not just Human, so integrated with magic... they basically breathed the magicules."
Grey's gaze sharpened. "They shouldn't exist."
"Enough magic could do anything my dear elf." Priestess replied.
The illusion flickered—brief flashes of rituals, bloodlines curated, magicules compressed and stabilised through unknown and lost means.
"More than fifty thousand," she continued. "Hidden. Watching."
Another shift.
The air cooled unnaturally. Pale figures moved through shadows, their presence barely disturbing the world at all.
"Vampires," she said. "A Few but Eternal.They were more of Observers."
Faker was interested in this place.
Tolstoy glanced around. "And the others?"
The priestess hesitated.
"Devil Lords," she said. "One per great era. Singular entities. Not leaders but events."
The illusion darkened further.
"And the Aos Sí," she finished quietly. "They were never absent. Only… elsewhere. The true fairies of this world."
The world settled.
"All races coexisted, not peacefully, but tolerably. Trade routes formed. Borders hardened. Treaties were written with magic as ink. But those were the lesser races of Elves, Humans, Trolls and Demons" Priestess continued chauffeuring them around.
"Lesser races?" Faker asked.
"Oh yes. I forgot to tell you. There were two classes of races back then. The four mentioned before were the lower races, not accepted by the magic. The Mythical races were more at one with magic. The High-Humans, the Vampires, the devils or demon lords and finally Aos si."
The priestess nodded at Faker's question, as if she had been waiting for it.
"Yes," she said calmly. "Lesser, not in worth—but in proximity."
She let her hand drift through the illusion, and the world responded.
"The lower races lived in Gilbert," she continued. "They shaped it, walked it, fought upon it. Magic answered them, but it did not cling to them. It remained external. A force to be used."
The illusion shifted subtly.
They saw elves pause before casting, listening for currents in the world. Humans sketching symbols, improvising spells that worked more often than they failed. Trolls channeling pressure through their bodies, enduring backlash as a matter of course. Demons forcing reality to comply, scars left behind in their wake.
"Magic was a language they spoke," the priestess said. "Fluently, sometimes beautifully. But it was never their native tongue."
She turned her palm upward.
The scene changed.
The hidden places brightened, not in intensity, but in clarity.
High-Humans walked through halls saturated with magicules so dense they shimmered like fog. Their breath disturbed it. Their skin refracted it. Children laughed, and the magic laughed back, curling instinctively around them.
"They were not casting," Grey murmured. "They were just existing."
"Yes," the priestess replied. "Magic did not answer them. It assumed them. It flowed through their veins."
The vision slid sideways.
Vampires stood beneath moonless skies, their forms perfectly still. Magicules bent around them without touching, like water around stone. They neither absorbed nor rejected it.
"They were outside the cycle," she said. "Immortal not because they were powerful—but because the world forgot how to finish them."
Faker's eyes lingered there longer than necessary.
Then—
The illusion tensed.
A presence pressed into reality so hard the magicules screamed. The land cracked not from impact, but from recognition.
A single figure stood at the centre of it.
A Towering and Undefined presence. Impossible to focus on for long.
"Devil Lords," the priestess said quietly. "They were not born. They arrived. No one knows how, but in every great era, there was one"
Tolstoy swallowed. "That thing doesn't look like it belongs anywhere."
"It didn't," she agreed. "That is why the world reorganised itself around it."
Finally, the illusion softened.
They stood at the edge of a glade that did not exist on any map. Light refracted strangely here, as if distance had opinions. Shapes flickered between visibility and absence—wings fluttering, laughter, eyes far too old.
"The Aos Sí," the priestess said, almost reverently. "They were not closer to magic."
She paused.
"They were magic taken form, wearing stories."
The illusion steadied.
"All eight races existed together," she continued. "Four lower. Four mythical. Balance was not about equality but somehow it functioned. Everyone kept to themselves."
Grey crossed his arms. "So what broke it?"