The World After the Shattering
The Shattering did not end when the explosion faded. Its effects continued outward, reshaping distant landscapes, awakening scattered forgeprints, and leaving traces of the First Forge's power throughout the known world.
When the First Forge scattered its eleven Affinity Flames, each Flame carried a foundational aspect of its living fire into the world. The regions touched most deeply by that power gradually developed strong affinity resonance. Storms intensified, frozen wildernesses deepened, forests darkened, waterways became charged with restorative energy, and even places shaped by emotion began attracting Forgekin suited to them.
The Affinity Flames are not confirmed to remain in those regions today. Their passage and influence left lasting impressions, but their exact locations remain unknown.
The Awakening of the Forgeprints
The Shattering also dispersed living forgeprints across the world. These patterns did not simply recreate their Firstborn origins as identical copies. Instead, each forgeprint responded to its surroundings, available affinity energy, and the experiences of the being it formed.
The Forgekin created from these scattered patterns became known as Forge Echoes. An Echo may inherit the recognizable form, affinity, and instincts of a Firstborn origin, but it possesses an independent mind, identity, and history.
This is why related Forgekin can appear in distant places or develop differently despite sharing the same origin. An Echo is not the return of the original being. It is a new life shaped from the pattern that being left behind.
A Fractured World
The force of the Shattering briefly damaged more than the physical world. Fractures opened between places, and, in rare cases, between entirely different realms.
Most of these openings closed almost immediately. Others may have left unstable locations where distance, perception, or affinity energy behaves unpredictably. Shadeborn's accidental arrival from the realm chronicled in The Chronicle of Valefyre remains the clearest proof that the Shattering reached beyond the known world.
No evidence indicates that Shadeborn or its realm caused the attack on the First Forge.
The Cost of Creation
The Forge Embers remaining within the fractured First Forge are finite. They retain enough living power to create objects and beings of extraordinary strength, but every act of creation consumes part of an Ember.
Forgemaster Prime therefore guards them carefully. Until new Embers can be kindled, every use permanently diminishes what remains of the First Forge's creative fire.
Reuniting all eleven Affinity Flames may allow a Master Forger to restore the First Forge and kindle new Embers. Whether the Flames can be safely reunited, and what might happen if they are brought together incorrectly, remains unknown.
The Age of Echoes
The modern world lives among the consequences of the Shattering. Forge Echoes awaken across affinity-shaped regions. The Emberbound search for the scattered Flames. Bearers of the Shattered Crown pursue the same trails to keep the Flames divided. Forgemaster Prime remains at the broken heart of the First Forge, guarding its remaining Embers and waiting for the work interrupted by the attack to continue.
Meanwhile, the identity of the unseen attacker remains unknown.