Fallen Nations

in Realms of Aerith

“Stone does not lie, but it also does not explain itself. Every ruin is an argument between what happened and what people needed to believe happened. My work is learning how to listen without taking sides.”

— Thesryn Koval, Royal Archaeomancer

  There are kingdoms whose banners still fly and whose borders are argued over in court and battlefield alike. Then there are those whose names are spoken only in the past tense, if they are spoken at all. These are the realms that failed, fell, or were erased so thoroughly that the world learned to live in the space they left behind.
  Some were destroyed by conquest, ground down by empires that found them inconvenient. Others collapsed inward as famine, faith, or succession tore them apart from within. A few vanished in ways that defy clean explanation, swallowed by catastrophe, abandoned by their people, or undone by decisions made too late to reverse. What remains are ruins, altered roads, inherited grudges, and laws whose original purpose no longer makes sense to anyone still enforcing them.
  The truth of a fallen kingdom is never singular. Victors write one version. Survivors remember another. Scholars argue over fragments and call it certainty. A temple might preserve a lineage long after the bloodline is gone, while a merchant family quietly profits from borders that no longer exist. In some cases the fall itself has become myth, reshaped until it serves as a warning or a justification rather than a memory.
  These lost nations still exert pressure on the present. Claims are made in their names. Old titles resurface during moments of instability. Wars are justified by maps no one uses anymore. Even the land remembers. Cities built atop older capitals inherit their problems. Roads follow trade routes laid down for reasons forgotten. There are places where people avoid digging too deep, not out of superstition, but because something older than the current order lies beneath.
  To speak of fallen kingdoms is not an exercise in mourning. It is an act of honesty. Power is temporary. Stability is negotiated. Every nation believes itself permanent until history proves otherwise. The ruins scattered across the world are not anomalies. They are the rule, waiting patiently for the present to join them.

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