The Sundering

The cataclysm that made the world as it is: fire in the west, flood in the east, desert in the scorched middle.

Long ago the land of Sahra Al-Jawf was green edge to edge under one Sultanate. Beneath it slept the Jinn — beings of smokeless fire. Then Al-Marid, the mightiest, woke. His rising cracked the world along its middle.

Where his fire breached in the west, orchards burned to basalt and rivers of lava still bleed. The sky recoiled and the rains fled east, drowning the eastern plains green and cutting the great water river. Between fire and flood, the heart scorched to the endless desert that remains.

The old Sultan and his champions drove Al-Marid down and sealed him beneath Kahf Al-Arwah — the Cave of Souls at the world’s dead centre. The Sultan did not survive the sealing, and his two greatest champions could agree on nothing after.