During the start of the great Era of Rebirth, the forgotten city of Cinderhold still existed.
Long before its furnaces lit the southern sky, before its mines filled the vaults of kings and its smiths learned to fold Grace into steel, a Mystical God Phoenix descended upon the land during one of Gehenna's earliest invasions.
The Demons had come through a Gate large enough to drown the valley in Gloom. Entire settlements vanished beneath the red-black fog. Rivers soured. Forests burned without heat.
Men who breathed the corruptive air turned their weapons on their own families before their bodies split open and birthed Beasts from within.
The Phoenix rose upon the city. Its wings covered the valley from ridge to ridge. Gold fire fell from its feathers and burned the Gloom out of the earth.
Demons fled beneath it, but the Phoenix hunted them through the mountains, tearing apart flying horrors with its talons and melting armies beneath the light of its eyes.
