Centuries ago, the world was whole. Time moved in one direction, and empires spanned oceans. But everything changed after the Chronofall — the moment the Tower Beyond Skyglass erupted from the center of the world.
Time fractured.
Rivers flowed backward.
Days repeated endlessly in some regions, while others lost entire years overnight.
People aged forward and backward, children born older than their parents.
The sky split, revealing the Tower — a spiraling structure too vast to measure, its top hidden beyond even the gods' gaze.
The continent of Oris splintered into five major zones:
🧩 1. The Looplands
Where days repeat endlessly.
Towns and people are stuck reliving the same events, unaware of the loop unless forcibly awakened.
Black-market time-mages operate here to harvest temporal energy.
⏳ 2. The Drift Realms
Time passes at different speeds in different areas. You can walk for five minutes and lose five years.
Home to lost cities and the undead — not reanimated corpses, but past versions of people still alive elsewhere.
🦴 3. The Cradle of Bones
War-torn and ungovernable.
Constant wars between time-locked kingdoms who view the Tower as a god or demon.
Birthplace of Kael.
💀 4. The Dead Future
A land destroyed by a potential timeline.
Haunts with shadows of things that might have happened — beasts, broken gods, towers that never were.
Only the Spiral Cult travels freely here.
🗼 5. The Tower's Shadow
The zone closest to the Tower. Here, time is most unstable.
Every year, new Tower Floors open.
Home to cults, rogue timewalkers, memory merchants, and cursed families.
🕳️ The Tower Beyond Skyglass
Said to be older than time itself.
No one knows who built it.
Each floor is a reality-bending trial — testing emotion, memory, combat, identity, fate.
Climbers are altered permanently.
If you fail, your soul becomes part of the Tower — as an Echo, Beast, or Test for others.
🔻 The Spiral Cult
The Spiral is not a religion. It is a machine disguised as faith, created to shape those capable of conquering the Tower.
Its central belief:"Time is flawed. We will rewrite it by climbing the Tower and seizing the Thread of All Futures."
🌑 Cult Doctrine:
Emotion is a flaw.
The future is a weapon.
Death is not an end. Only a rewinding.
The Tower wants to be climbed. But not by the weak.
🩸 Spiral Cult Hierarchy 1. The Helix
The leader. A being who claims to have seen the top of the Tower — possibly not human anymore.
Said to exist in all timelines simultaneously.
Communicates through time-echoes and mind-burn visions.
2. Chronarchs (x7)
The Spiral's generals. Each governs a continent, region, or timeline zone.
Wield time-based powers that can rewrite cause and effect.
Kael's former handler, Chronarch Veyla, is known for erasing entire villages from history when they disobeyed her.
3. Sigil Lords
High-ranking Spiral priests, each with a unique sigil set burned into them.
Train and control Seedlings like Kael.
Compete viciously for promotion through assassination and manipulation.
Each floor conquered by their Seedlings earns them prestige.
4. Seedlings
Children taken or born into the Cult.
Trained through mental loops, trauma-runs, and controlled timeline ruptures.
Only 1 in 20 survive their first Sigil Awakening.
Kael was one of the rare Seedlings to awaken not one but two sigils before his first climb.
5. Echoes
Failed Seedlings who are re-purposed.
Become Tower beasts, time-specters, or living trials.
Some retain fragments of their humanity and whisper warnings to those they once trained beside.
⚙️ Rituals and Practices
The Unraveling: Final test of loyalty where a Seedling must kill someone they once loved.
Sigil Carving: Each sigil must be etched into flesh, bone, and soul. It causes memory loss and hallucinations.
Memory Purges: Periodic wipes to keep Seedlings from growing attachments.
Rewind Chambers: Training chambers where Seedlings are killed repeatedly and revived, to remove their fear of death.