The Infinite City: The Dungeon That Never Ends

*Before we dive into the lore break, here's what these are all about:

I'll be posting a lore break after every 10th chapter—so you'll see them at Chapters 10, 20, 30, and so on. These breaks give me a little extra breathing room between story chapters while also letting me expand on the worldbuilding in ways that might not make it into the main narrative.

Sometimes, these pieces will hint at future events. Other times, they'll just exist for the sake of deepening the world, even if they never directly affect the story.

For this first lore break, I want to explore The Hushed Star, last of the Aeon Moths—an ancient and mysterious entity that I just wanted to write more about. It might never play a major role, but the spark for it is alive now, and I want to capture that before it fades.

Now, on to the lore*

The Hushed Star, last of the Aeon Moths, was first recorded 130,000 years ago on a clay tablet, when it gave the original Matriarch of the Moondrift, whose given name is lost to time, the clan name. Although the way that the tablet describes the Hushed Star makes it seem like it was a known and feared ancient figure, most estimates put the true age at over 1,000,000 years.

The Hushed Star, and by extension the other Aeon Moths, are thought to be the ones that brought about the end of the Age of Monsters, though it cost them their species. From the few people who have spoken with The Hushed Star, it laments the loss of its species, though it is happy that the Age of Monsters is over.

The Knowledge Keepers Guild only has rumors about that time in history, but when The Hushed Star speaks of the Age of Monsters, it says that it was a time of endless war, and that even the Garuda and the Naga put aside their differences to help bring the era to an end.

Also, from the final battle, there was so much magical energy in the air that the Infinite City, which exists in its own subdimensional space, came into being. That is why there are so many magical manifestations in the city.

The Hushed Star is a large moth creature with 60 wings and 40 legs. It is void black with spots of shimmering blue light. Nothing that The Hushed Star says can be verified; the only beings that are older are the Creator Goddess Elyra, the First Flame, and the Goddess of Chaos, Vaelith, the Gilded Wound.

In the religious texts of the Goddess of Order, Kaelor, the Bloodbound Oath is said to have been born during that age. The prevailing theory of the extinction of the Aeon Moths is that they sacrificed almost all their magical energy to create the Goddess in order to keep her sister, the Goddess of Chaos, in check.

But the Goddesses present at the time refuse to speak on the topic, and The Hushed Star will kill anyone who asks it about that theory. Is that because the Goddess forbade The Hushed Star from speaking on the subject, and that is where its name comes from—or for some other reason entirely? Nobody knows, and nobody will probably ever know.

When it comes to the power of The Hushed Star, it is one of the five Prime Beings, whose ranks include the following:

Prime Garuda – The Skypiercer, Ruler of Open Air

Prime Naga – The Coil of Endless Depths

The Hushed Star – Last of the Aeon Moths

Vorthanax – The First Flameborn Dragons

Ouralis – The Silence Beneath the Sea