The Split

Lore & Background

Before the Split, the world was a single contiguous land. The exact mechanism of the sundering is never fully spelled out in a single expository scene; instead, the game layers fragments of it through character dialogue, environmental ruins, and the spiritual residue left in both realms. What is clear is the outcome: a vast chasm or separation now divides the upper and lower worlds, and the Dahnan — the people of the lower world — were left in a state of subjugation that Cenadian society treats as natural, as inevitable as gravity.

The Split is not merely a geological event in the game's mythology. It carries a spiritual and almost theological weight. The God of Dawn, a figure woven through the world's religious and magical systems, is connected to the broader cosmology that gave rise to the two realms. The Dahnan possess an innate spiritual potency — a connection to the land's deeper magic — that Cenadian society both fears and exploits. This tension between the two peoples is not a recent political dispute; it is the living wound of a world that was once whole.

For the player, the Split is the question that underlies every encounter. Why were the Dahnan cast below? Who or what caused the sundering? Can the two worlds be made whole again? The game's story does not resolve these questions with a single tidy answer; instead, it asks the player to sit with the weight of a world that was broken and never properly mended, and to decide what justice looks like in the aftermath.

In Their Own Story

The old Dahnan elders speak of a time before the silence. They say the sky was one sky, the ground was one ground, and the wind did not know where the upper world ended and the lower began. Then the world cracked — not with the thunder of a god's fist, but with a long, slow exhale, as if the land itself had drawn a breath it could not release. The ground split along a seam that had always been there, a fault line in the bones of the world. The upper half rose. The lower half sank. And between them opened a darkness so deep that no Dahnan child has ever seen its bottom.

Now the elders press their palms to the cracked earth in the ruins of what was once a single city, and they feel the vibration still. A low, almost subsonic hum. The world is still splitting, they say. Just slower. Just quieter. And if you press your ear to the stone long enough, you can hear it weeping.

Reader's Guide

The Split is never presented as a single scripted cutscene. Instead, it is revealed in layers: early dialogue between Dahnan characters references the 'old world' and the separation in terms of ancestral memory; Cenadian characters often speak of the two-world order as a natural, divinely ordained arrangement; and environmental details — the architecture of the chasm walls, the spiritual residue in Dahnan ruins, the way magic behaves differently in each realm — all reinforce that the sundering was both physical and metaphysical.

In the game's broader narrative, the Split is the inciting condition for the entire conflict. The Dahnan's enslavement is justified by Cenadian society as a consequence of the Split, as though the lower world's people were 'meant' to serve. The player's party, which includes both Dahnan and Cenadian members, embodies the possibility that this division is not immutable. The God of Dawn's role in the mythic framework adds a spiritual layer: the Split is not just geology but a rupture in the world's spiritual order.

A common fan debate centers on whether the Split was a natural event, a divine act, or the result of a specific historical actor. The game leaves this deliberately ambiguous, and the community has generated multiple theories. What is certain is that the game treats the Split as the irreducible origin wound — the event that makes every other event possible.

Did You Know?

• The Split is referenced as a past event throughout the game's dialogue and world-building, but no single scene provides a complete, definitive account of exactly how or why it occurred — the lore is deliberately fragment
• The Dahnan's innate spiritual connection to the land and their subjugation by Cenadian society are presented as direct consequences of the Split, making the event the root of the game's central social conflict.
• The God of Dawn, a figure central to the world's mythology and magical systems, is woven into the broader cosmological framework that includes the Split, suggesting the sundering has spiritual as well as physical dimensi
• The game's setting — a world divided into an upper and lower realm with a rigid caste system — is a direct narrative consequence of the Split, meaning the entire political and social structure the player encounters exist