In -7,510 Petros, which rarely reached freezing a millennia earlier was now covered in ice all year round. Men drifted south from Fane to found and inhabit warmer Bonilan. Lack of ability to travel easily isolated people into tiny city-states. Old political and classification boundaries were forgotten. Magic had become synonymous with evil. Faiths became simpler. Soon the Sun would become a friend, a savior, and in the end was either worshipped as a God, such as in the early Paternal faith of the men of Isban or at least as a representation of one.
Here we leave a vast chunk of time in our tale. Little history of note occurred during this time of great hardship. Mostly, the past was washed away. Two things of importance did occur.
The first is that Kathubra receded during the Epoch. The need for sheer survival took her place. The weakened Goddess was eventually and easily sequestered on an island that now bears her name by entities within her own retinue, and by the vengeful efforts of the God Siomann, virtually extinct from the planet himself.
The second occurrence of note (at least for DOM) is that Castig immigrants from Morit seeking refuge from the crushing ice storms and loss of their land to the more aggressive southern Morits crossed the barren ice fields from their lands sometime around -6,000, traveling thousands of miles on the now hardened oceans and settling in New Castia. This would later be renamed Castan in honor of their great leader.
Lars Castan bore the scars of many battles. He could feel many of them at the moment. It did not do to complain. The sun was out finally. After thirty days. He would have his people cover many miles today and he would pretend that it would be easy. He shook his red mane of hair. "Stop thinking" he told himself. But his mind always drifted back to his Elsa. The scar he could not forget. Taken in a sudden spasm of ice and blood. There was a loud crack. Then a last look that seared into him deeper than the chasm into which she was about to travel - an instant burning admission and recognition of all that had passed unspoken between them for all of their years together. Then she was no more. They would all stop. They would stop right there. They would forget who they were. They would cry and whine like children. He could not let them. "We are Castig. This is a scar only." It would always be just a scar. The sun was finally out. "We go" he shouted and turned away. No look back. On his death bed nearly sixty years afterward, surrounded by the grateful faces of a delivered people he finally called out her name. But without complaint. Without tears. Then he went too. The scar was no more.
Next: The Path of Atarus
