The Ascendant Spiral

• The Helix Throne: A mysterious, masked figure known only as The Crownless Spiral. They do not speak in public, instead communicating through dream-walkers and celestial visionaries.
• Spindle Lords: A council of thirteen high-ranking seers, each responsible for interpreting a different aspect of the prophecy (Time, Blood, Flame, Dust, etc.). They command regional Spiral enclaves.
• The Tethered: Ascension candidates in training, chosen through visions or signs. Often young, gifted, or socially marginalized individuals.
• Reckoners: Enforcers, spies, and recruiters. Often charming, patient, and terrifyingly devout.
• The Petaled Choir: A subgroup of oracles and singers who transmit divine resonance through psalms believed to shape fate.

• Core Beliefs: Mortality is not a flaw—it is a test. Ascension comes not through obedience or purity, but through trial, entropy, revelation, and transformation.
• The world is a cocoon for the Spiralborn, and its breaking is inevitable.
• Followers view pain as sculptural, necessary.
• Tattoos, spiral-shaped scars, and runed masks are common.
• Members are intensely communal, but secretive with outsiders. They often express themselves in poetic riddles, symbolic dreams, and paradoxical proverbs.

Outwardly: Offering sanctuary, vision, and purpose to the forgotten and the lost.
In truth:

• Seek and gather Spiralborn candidates
• Recover ancient artifacts tied to ascension rituals
• Destabilize current religious, political, and arcane institutions
• Prepare the world for the Cracking of the Final Shell—believed to be an apocalyptic transformation event

• A growing network of hidden sanctums and monasteries across Mythralune
• Spiralborn oracles with strange, precognitive gifts
• Wealth gained through trade in prophetic trinkets and vision-selling

The first whispers of the Spiral began near ley-warped ruins in western Virellia, where strange visions and spiral sigils were discovered burned into stone and memory. Soon after, three nobles disappeared under mysterious circumstances—only to return transformed, proclaiming the coming of the Spiralborn.

Their return formed the first Spindle Cell, and the movement began to spread quietly, gaining influence among the disillusioned, the gifted, and the outcast. The Spiral gained its first wave of serious followers after it accurately predicted the Collapse of Emberreach’s Nexus, which gave it sudden and alarming credibility.

Now, their sanctums grow deeper. Their prophecies louder. Their reach wider. Some whisper that one of the Spiralborn has already ascended—and returned.

Worship is centered around the Spiral Principle, a belief that all existence coils toward transcendence. The Spiralborn are not gods—but the next gods, and the universe itself is eager for them to rise.

Official Religion Name: The Cult of Becoming
Other faiths are tolerated, even studied—so long as they fit into the Spiral’s model of mortal evolution.

• The Coiling Verse: A fragmented prophecy said to be spoken by a dying god who foresaw the rise of the Spiralborn.
• The Eleven Masks: Mortals in the First Era who glimpsed the Spiral and were consumed—or transformed.
• The Cracking of the Shell: The future end of the world, not as death, but as molting into a higher layer of being.

Allegedly revealed to a young, blind archivist named Yavien of the Quiet Flame, who vanished after writing the Book of Spiral Roots. Many claim the “origin” is far older—something rediscovered rather than newly born.

• The universe is a spiraling dream, always tightening and folding upon itself.
• Leylines are the veins of change—and the Spiralborn will one day reshape them like tendons of a new body.
• Time is nonlinear, and some followers believe the Spiralborn already exist in the future, pulling the present toward themselves.

• “Ascension is not granted, it is taken.”
• “There is no end. Only turning.”
• “Divinity is mortal will, refined through suffering.”
• “The gods are witnesses, not wardens.”

• Moral relativity is celebrated: what seems monstrous may be a necessary cocoon-cutting.
• Betrayal of one’s former self is seen as an act of devotion.
• “Sin” is stagnation; refusing transformation is the only blasphemy.

• Spiral Vigils: meditative dances performed in spirals around leyline convergence points.
• Dreamfeasts: ritual meals eaten in silence, during which visions are shared through touch.
• Ash Veilings: wearing masks of soot during transformation rites.

• No traditional hierarchy—only Signs of Ascension determine spiritual authority.
• Most priests are also seers, and many are temporarily blind as part of their training.
• Symbols include coiled bone necklaces, silver ink tattoos, and the Third Eye Spiral, a mark burned into initiates’ palms.

• Secret influence over a faction of nobles in Virellia and Embergarde
• Infiltration into leyline research circles and arcane academies
• Suspected of orchestrating several “natural” disasters to fulfill parts of the prophecy
• Rumors that one of the Tethered may already have transcended—yet returned