The Nine Nadir

In the annals of Ayinel, there is a legend that refuses to fade: the Nine Nadir. Scholars call it a seam worked into the Veil. Wanderers speak of a crown that holds the world together. In every telling the Nine are tied to the Nine Winds of Magic—Buffering, Perpetual, Predictable, Prevailing, Sporadic, Terrestrial, Transcendent, Wandering, Zephyrous—each wind once pushed past wisdom. The Magisterium cut those excesses away and sealed them beyond the Veil, outside the Cycle. The true names are gone. Only epithets, signs, and the habit of leaving the circle’s center blank remain. Quiet rumor says the Magisterium still treats the Nadir as an existential threat should absence be fed.  

Summary

  The word dragon entered speech when the Star Song Wanderer sang the first constellations and her pursuer split the day in two. It kept its edge when the early Magisterium prepared to ascend. They found nine “answers” growing inside their own dominion, each drawn from a Wind, each sharp enough to end a nation. Rather than rise carrying them, the Masters fasted from speech, worked a geometry of stitches, and opened a hollow beyond reach. Into that calm they laid what must not return and sewed the seam shut.   Since then the world remembers in dents called cenotaphs. A bargain that tastes like iron. A corridor that breathes but never opens. A hush where lies fall apart. Sand that catches fire. These flares fade. They are not the Nine returning, only the fabric recalling the weight it once bore. The sign most often chalked is the Nadir Crown: nine crooked marks around an untouched center. Tradition insists the middle stays empty.  

The Nine Without Names

   

The Devourer

Wind: Buffering
Also called: Tithe-Tongue, Coin-Split, The Ledger
Essence: Speech behaves like debt. Identity thins with every costly word.
Traces: Iron-tasting bargains, names that come back lighter, coins that prefer the edge.  

The Carrion

Wind: Perpetual
Also called: Bone Orchard, White Grove, Seed-Eater
Essence: Life grown from death without grace; cycles forced to feed themselves.
Traces: Bone seeds that bud at dusk, sweet rot that hums an ancestor’s tune.  

The Weight

Wind: Predictable
Also called: Last Effort, Glass Sea, The Sagging Law
Essence: Futility practiced until it hardens into rule.
Traces: Frost that writes regrets and melts clean, rooms that ask you to sit down and stop.  

The Unmaker

Wind: Prevailing
Also called: Backsmith, Null-Smith, The Unforge
Essence: Craft remembers the way back; making turns into undoing.
Traces: A bench where tools forget their use, sand and water that catch fire.  

The Mathematician

Wind: Sporadic
Also called: Lament Engine, Tally-Cross, The Metronome
Essence: Chance corrected into schedule; suffering arrives on time.
Traces: Soft ticks with no source, accidents that line up like measures.  

The False Lantern

Wind: Terrestrial
Also called: Hearth-Thief, House of Lanterns, Open Square
Essence: Comfort used as lure; sanctuary promised but withheld.
Traces: Doors that breathe and never open, perfect maps missing the final span.  

The Chain

Wind: Transcendent
Also called: Star-Gaoler, Iron Sky, The Link
Essence: Futures leashed to will; ascent bent into orbit.
Traces: Star-iron that hums near rulers, oaths that feel heavier than they should.  

The Collector

Wind: Wandering
Also called: Curator of Shadows, Sable Placard, The Label
Essence: Unknowns caged by names; dread made permanent by description.
Traces: Blank plates that engrave by morning, footsteps following captions you did not write.  

The Spiral

Wind: Zephyrous
Also called: Stillmother, Hush Well, The Stair
Essence: Breath denied and motion judged; silence mistaken for peace.
Traces: Fields where lies cannot find grammar, rooms that accept only one true sentence.