Chapter Text
Introduction:
In the beginning, there was only Sothis. Growing tired of her lonely existence, the Goddess bore children unto the world. Creatures of all shapes and sizes grew to flourish under her watchful eye and all was good. The Goddess’s most directly-related children enforced a fair rule across the lands, for human and beast alike, allowing for the careful cultivation of knowledge, society, and prosperity.
However, Sothis and her children would quickly learn a lesson not soon to be forgotten: there would always be those who slithered in the dark, those who lusted after their heavenly powers. Sothis and her children would be wary of these foes in the future, but as they remained ignorant of what boiled just underneath, certain groups were gaining followers upon followers. They had manipulated a human man, who was truthfully no more than a petty thief, to murder the Goddess asleep in her chair, then used her blood and remains for more dubious matters.
This challenge of authority was met with Seiros’s rage and retaliation, and what had begun as an assassination attempt had become a full-scale war. The primarily monster-led regions of Adrestia, Faerghus, and the Leicester Alliance aided Seiros, with humans taking the side of those who slithered in the dark, envious and afraid of the power granted to the beasts.
Despite their gifts, it was Seiros’s side that found themselves losing the war; Adrestia, Faerghus, and the Leicester Alliance had never worked this closely together before, and their leaders were said to be bickering at every turn. Fearing bloodshed and growing tired of battle, Seiros conceded, and the humans were victorious. She and her siblings exiled themselves to the Fódlan Woods, a secluded area huge in scale that had been burned to cinders during the war, and sealed the forest with a magic barrier, maintained by the Crest Stones-- the hearts of their fallen kin who had been lost, scattering a few across the lands in case any lost beasts still needed to find a way home.
And with that, the war faded into history. Modern day scholars merely attribute Sothis, Seiros, and the beasts to be another part of ancient mythology created by their ancestors to explain events in the past. Objects theorized to be the Crest Stones of legend have popped up across the globe, but there is still much debate as to where the “Fódlan Woods” were. Civilizations like the Adrestian Empire, the Kingdom of Faerghus, the Leceister Alliance, Duscar, Almyra, Dagda, and Brigid seem to have vanished off the face of the Earth, though certain artifacts and symbols thought to be wielded by knights or kings have turned up in areas similar to the ones described in old texts.
As time has gone on, the belief that these civilizations existed, that the Fódlan Woods themselves even exist has dwindled substantially, but there are still a few who believe that somewhere, in a remote forest, there exists life that humans have only thought to be tall tales still thriving.
Now, a thousand years later, a new story begins.
Index:
Chapter One: Lost Flames (Edelgard/F!Byleth)
Chapter Two: A Golden Sunset (Claude & Hilda)
Chapter Three: Morning Blues (Dimitri & Dedue [can be read as Dimitri/Dedue])
Chapter Four: In Your Embrace (Petra/Dorothea)
Chapter Five: Matters of Ink and Parchment (And the Heart) (Lysithea/Cyril)
Chapter Six: Blissfully Unaware (Linhardt/Caspar)