The Mana's Ascension and The Shattering

The Mana, an ancient race brought into existence by Astaroth, rejected their mortality and attempted to ascend to godhood. In order to fuel such a dramatic ascension, they callously used the Hearts of the Lands - the very gemstones that regulated the fabric of the reality they sought to transcend. This process kicked off the splintering of the world, shattering the land into four plates separated by the Astral Plane. Many beings were lost to this shattering - some of them seemed to fall through the Astral Plane and found themselves inhabiting a completely new land, separated from the original.

This shattering reduced civilizations into scattered villages, and led to the death of Kaia. The Caeloraan attempted to create a device named the Genesis Kiln to find a way to those lost in the Astral Plane, but it failed and was abandoned.

Additionally, the departure of the Mana and the subsequent Shattering drove many of the gods of that time to depart from the world. Of the remaining gods, those known as the Primordials gifted various things to various animals that still remained in the lands. These animals eventually became sentient, leading to many of the different species of people that exist in the current world.