Welcome to the Codex! Every Friday, we will focus on one topic from one of the upcoming books, or one of the books that have been published. The Codex will review what is commonly known about that topic in the world, even if just at a scholarly level. There will still be mysteries, but if you are interested in learning more about something you read in the book or in another blog post, the Codex is the way to go.
Today's topic is of critical importance to the Twinverse, although most commoners in the world have no knowledge of its existence (or its suppression).It is a phenomenon called the Reflection, which came into being at the beginning of the Third Age, when the Trienorn (we will talk about them in the next Codex entry) ascended to divinity, draining the divine power that suffused the Twinverse. Their presence suppressed the Reflection, but the events at the end of the Third Age removed that suppression effect, and during the Interregnum, the Reflection fully asserted itself, with catastrophic and world-changing consequences. Its presence was felt throughout the Fourth Age, until it was finally suppressed again by a major sacrifice at the very end of the Fourth Age, at the climax of the War of Saints.
At its heart, the Reflection was a cosmological reaction to the sudden absence of the essential energy that suffused the Twinverse. It's a sickness of the cosmos, in other words, caused by the rash actions of the Trienorn (although it can be debated whether they knew what they were doing). The best analogy to explain this would be to consider this essential energy as a "lubricant" between the various forces of the cosmology (e.g. the various Planes of existence). Removing it caused "friction", which manifested as the Reflection. While the Trienorn's presence kept it at bay, once they were no longer in the picture, it asserted itself fully until it was once again suppressed.
But what were the consequences of the Reflection? For most people, they were unknown, although very much real. You see, when the Reflection asserted itself, every living creature in one world became metaphysically connected to a similar living creature in the other world (humanoid to humanoid, animal to animal). When one of the pair died, the other member of the pair would unavoidably die soon afterwards (although the cause would always be believable, e.g. an accident, a sickness, etc.). But the more powerful the creature, the stronger this connection. The demigods who ruled the world in the Trienorn's absence were much more closely connected. Divided into two pantheons - the Thelalorn of Ibrin and the Iranorn of Azran - they discovered to their horror that if one of their number was killed, the other member of their pair would instantly die as well, but this sudden death could also tear rifts in the fabric of the world itself. One such rift, caused by the reflective death of the Iranorn Tyharnak in the continent of Y'aquande, caused the creation of the Rift of Khoast which still plagues the continent.
As a result, the pantheons became paranoid about their own security and every feud between demigods became a war by proxy, for fear of damaging reality further. It also meant that powerful creatures who wished harm on the demigods could not carry on their plans by physically killing them, for the same reason. It was speculated that if both members of a connected pair were killed at the same time, there would be no cosmological repercussions, but this was never tested until the very end of the Fourth Age.
There were other consequences to the Reflection, which were far rarer, but still worth considering. The Reflection only connected living creatures, meaning that the undead did not pair. While unintelligent undead acted as forces of nature, intelligent undead acted with agency and became aberrations within the new cosmological law. When a person died by natural causes, or by violence caused by another living creature, the Reflection worked properly by slaying their twinned soul; but when an intelligent undead killed a person, the Reflection couldn't process the event. The twinned member of the pair who survived couldn't quite die as a result, and became an undying abomination called a svaer. Thankfully, there were few of these made, but they existed in torment.
Another, more well known side effect (which most mortals simply considered The Way Things Are) is that the Reflection trapped souls as well. It inhibited the natural process of dying and transitioning to the afterlife, and instead forced souls to reincarnate again and again, while no new souls came into the world. As a result, anyone who existed when the Reflection fully asserted itself was trapped in a cycle of reincarnation that lasted for 10,000 years. Mercifully, memories weren't carried over except sometimes in fragmented dreams, so most people didn't realize the full horror of their plight.
There were several other minor consequences of the Reflection, such as the creation of glad, places where the Twin Worlds were so close to each other that one could cross over without even noticing it. The Reflection also indirectly affected the polarization of Ibrin and Azran, since the more benevolent Thelalorn took over Ibrin, and the more malevolent Iranorn took over Azran, shaping the histories of both worlds along the moral spectrum.
In the end, the Reflection was only defeated when, at the climax of the War of Saints, a creature called Lilaire sacrificed herself to restore normality in the cosmos. Her sacrifice suppressed the Reflection and allowed people no longer to live (and die) under its rule. However, some scholars believe even Lilaire's sacrifice didn't erase the Reflection entirely, and that it could theoretically be re-established if the divine energy she released would disappear again. Thankfully, though, the ritual used by the Trienorn to do so at the end of the Second Age is gone - and with it, hopefully, any risk that the Reflection will return to plague the Twinverse.
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