The sky over the Shrouded Hills had never been so vibrant, nor so terrifying.
Fifty years had passed since the Living One emerged from the twisted wreckage of the IFS Zephyr, setting the Four Nations of Arcanum on a path of unprecedented harmony. In the Republic of Vendigroth, the restored city of glass and steel hummed with the steady, blue pulse of Tesla coils and the rhythmic clicking of medical automatons. To the south, the Unified Kingdom had forged Tarant into a sprawling industrial titan of soot and steam, while the Kingdom of Arland remained a bastion of sophisticated culture. Most remarkably, the Kingdom of Cumbria, once a decaying relic of a forgotten age, had undergone a miraculous renaissance by marrying the arcane arts with steamworks, creating a society where enchanted blades and flintlock pistols moved in perfect, balanced tandem.
Then, the world broke.
It began with a low, bone-deep frequency that jammed the telegraph lines in Tarant and made the Mages of Tulla drop to their knees as their internal mana curdled. For one full hour, the earth did not merely shake—it groaned with the sound of grinding metal and tearing silk. It was a fundamental shudder of the Law of Static Reality. High above the Stonewall Mountains, the sky bled into impossible shades of violet, emerald, and a sickly, flickering crimson that seemed to pulse with a heartbeat not of this world.
While the kings of Cumbria and Arland made frantic proclamations of a "mysterious albeit non-destructive" natural phenomenon to stave off a continental panic, the Republic of Vendigroth looked upon the heavens with cold, analytical dread.
Deep within the high-tech laboratories of the Vendigrothian Capital, Master Technologists watched in horror as their analytical engines spat out strings of nonsense data. Their Flow Spectrometers shattered under the pressure of a magnetic field that had suddenly inverted. Simultaneously, in the ancient, floating spires of Tulla—the magical heart now beating within the Republic's chest—the Archmagi stared into scrying pools that boiled with chaotic energy.
The two greatest intellectual forces of Arcanum reached the same shattering conclusion at the exact same moment.
The news ripped through the Four Nations like a gale. It became terrifyingly clear: the earthquake had not been a local disaster, but a dimensional collision. Arcanum had been torn from its own space and thrust into a foreign world. The stars were strangers because the sky was no longer their own. And more shocking still was what lay to their immediate East.
Across a narrow, churning stretch of sea that had not existed a day prior, a new horizon loomed. It was a massive, jagged Continent, wreathed in mist and guarded by jagged isles. It radiated a primitive, untamed magickal signature so potent it felt like a physical weight against the Vendigrothian sensors.
"The Ethereal Plane has been forcibly sutured to another," the report from Tulla whispered.
"We have been pulled into the orbit of a new sun," the Capital's technologists declared.
The Republic of Vendigroth looked toward the East, toward the smoke-filled horizons and the mysterious continent that awaited them. They were no longer the only masters of their world.
******
The silence that followed the Great Unravelling lasted only as long as it took for the telegraph lines to hiss back to life. As the violet hues faded from the sky, the four nations of Arcanum—united for fifty years under the Living One's peace—felt the old friction of their differing natures ignite once more. The news that they were now neighbors to a vast, primitive, and magically-saturated Continent ripped through the land like a gale.
In the Unified Kingdom, silence was not a commodity; profit was. In the smog-choked metropolis of Tarant, the Industrial Council didn't tremble at the dimensional shift—they calculated it.
"If there is a continent, there is coal," Chairman Willoughs declared to a room of frantic investors. "If there are isles, there are ports. If there are people, there is a demand for Steam Engines and fine Tarantian textiles."
To the south, the Kingdom of Arland moved with a quieter, more sophisticated grace. From the marble docks of Caladon, the Arlandic fleet set sail. Their ships were works of art—towering wooden galleons with enchanted sails that caught the wind even in a dead calm. Their scholars and diplomats looked East with curiosity rather than greed, eager to find the "Brotherhoods" and "Schools" that must surely govern such a magically potent land.
The Kingdom of Cumbria, however, prepared for a different kind of encounter. Under the lineage of King Maximillian, the Cumbrians had mastered the delicate balance of the two forces. They did not send mere merchants; they sent the Knights of the Dragon. These warriors boarded traditional wooden warships, carrying Plate Armor etched with Tulla's protective wards while holstering Vendigrothian Repeating Carbines. They were the most prepared for a world where Aptitude was a battlefield, knowing that a silver sword was as necessary as a lead bullet.
But it was the Republic of Vendigroth that held the most somber vigil. While they had shared their findings with the others, they kept their darkest fears for the High Council. They viewed the Continent's "Chaos" as a biological and physical contaminant—a threat to the very Natural Laws that allowed their civilization to function. They launched the pride of their restored nation: a fleet of Ironclads, ships of gleaming steel and rivets that required no wind, only the hum of advanced engines. Carrying Tesla Rod infantry and heavy Automatons, their mission was not to trade, but to stabilize the "Dimensional Bleed."
As the four fleets—one of steel and three of wood—converged on the Skellige Isles, the needles on their Flow Spectrometers began to dance erratically. The Magical Aptitude of the air was rising.
On the horizon, the jagged, snow-capped peaks of the Isles appeared through the mist. The people of Arcanum saw opportunity, mystery, and data. They did not yet see the Drakkar ships hidden in the coves, nor the warriors who sharpened their axes for the "Smoke-Spewing Monsters" approaching their shores.