When Jiang Han went to the Cat Lower Netherworld for a vacation.
On Anse II Plane, roughly six starfields away from the material plane where the Witches dwelled, it happened to be late at night.
The enormous castle symbolizing the Anse Elves' rule over this plane had been built atop a cliff. Exquisitely beautiful towers rose across the surrounding land, with chain-linked suspension bridges connecting them to the castle. Artworks representing this flourishing civilization and consummate craftsmanship floated upon countless small islands. This place was like a kingdom in the heavens.
To the common people who had been oppressed for centuries, it certainly was a kingdom in the heavens.
At the very top floor of an enormous tower at the heart of the castle complex.
"Calamity. I seem to see the mark of calamity spreading."
Mage Adele Stormsong spoke.
This tall elf, possessed of delicate features and a slender figure, stared gravely into the starry sky. Within that flawless expanse, she saw a trace of golden yellow—a greedy golden yellow.
That power and calamity seemed to have come from time immemorial, yet also seemed as though it had happened only yesterday.
Elves were a long-lived race. They were intelligent, mature, and powerful.
Every elf underwent her coming-of-age ceremony at the age of twelve. At that age, they were already equivalent to the twenty-year-olds among the common human races of the universe. They gradually matured, began to comprehend the truths of all things in the world, and began to awaken their own will.
They remembered just how glorious and powerful their people had been several centuries ago.
But.
Elves such as Adele also remembered that, several centuries ago—so recent it felt like yesterday—a tremendous beam of light had first pierced through the Anse Plane.
Rifts, void, death, and plague