An illuminated manuscript with the royal seal of Solara pressed into the cover. The pages are vellum, the ink unfaded despite the book’s obvious age.
In the year we now call Year Zero, when the scattered temples of Elandria had only recently united under a single Church, a scholar named Calros knelt in prayer for forty days and forty nights. He sought guidance, for the faithful were many but scattered, and the forces of darkness pressed upon them from all sides.
On the forty-first dawn, Elandria answered.
The light that filled Calros’s cell was said to be visible from three leagues distant. When it faded, he emerged with words of prophecy burned into his very soul: “A new age of light and prosperity will dawn under the Kingdom of Solara, where truth and justice shall reign eternal.”
The prophecy spread like wildfire. Nobles and clergy from across the land gathered in the coastal city that would become Solaris, drawn by the promise of divine mandate. There, beneath the light of both sun and moon, they crowned Aldric Solborn as the first king of a united realm. He was a man of modest birth but extraordinary virtue—a soldier who had defended temples, a scholar who had copied holy texts, and above all, a believer who had never wavered in his faith.
King Aldric I took as his symbol the golden sunburst of Elandria, and declared that the Kingdom of Solara would be built upon twin pillars: the Light of the goddess, and the Order of righteous law. The Church of Elandria became not merely the state religion, but the spiritual foundation upon which all else would rest.
And the prophecy, it seemed, was true. In those first years, everything the kingdom touched flourished. Trade routes opened as if by magic. Harvests were bountiful beyond memory. Artists and scholars flocked to Solaris, creating works of beauty that still inspire us today. Even the weather seemed to favor the faithful—storms parted around Solaran ships, and droughts ended when Solaran priests arrived to pray.
Saint Calros himself lived to see the kingdom’s first golden age, though he never sought power or position. He spent his final years copying texts in a monastery, declining all honors. When asked why, he would only say that the Light had shown him one truth, and that was enough for any lifetime.
His body was never recovered. Some say he walked into the Witchwood to seek one final revelation. Others claim Elandria took him directly to her realm, that he might continue his studies in eternal light.
What we know for certain is this: the Kingdom of Solara has endured for over twelve hundred years, its throne passing from one Solborn to the next in unbroken succession. The prophecy remains true. The light endures.
Long live the King. Long live Solara.
—From the Royal Archives, required reading for all citizens of the realm