“Every age begins with fire and ends with ink. What we call it now says more about us than about the world we’re describing.” —Prof. Bendra Luth, Naming the Ages
The Age of Affliction, known formally as the Seventh Age, began with the outbreak of the Black Sam epidemic and the violent ascent of the Clavic Empire. These events marked what many call the beginning of the end—a cascade of collapse defined by plague, mass infertility, famine, lawlessness, and the rise of Adoxipham, a crippling new drug that hollowed out entire populations.
The Clavic regime seized power in the chaos, establishing a brutal order over the ruins of the old world. What followed was a near-global unravelling: borders redrawn, dynasties overthrown, cities left to rot.
Yet not all see it as a time of ruin. A growing number refer to it as the Age of Influence instead—after Influism, a radical school of thought that surged in the power vacuum. It spread like fire: toppling governments, sparking revolutions, and giving birth to new models of rule that shattered the old order.
This is the current age in the Everwind series.