Just as storytelling brings worlds to life within our minds, the world of Remnant is itself a story, the language it’s told in holding the power to shape reality. This language is known as the Divine Tongue, and is the source of all magic.
In ancient times, Man had learnt the Divine Tongue and could freely shape Remnant as he saw fit, but a terrible incident lost to history prompted the gods to wipe it from memory, leaving only two remnants of the tongue in mortal hands: Dust and Theme.
The first words spoken in the Divine Tongue laid the foundation of Remnant, and in time the echoes of these words took upon crystalline form that Man would come to know as Dust.
There exist six elementary forms of Dust: Fire, Wind, Water, Earth, Gravity, and Light. When in possession of a Dust crystal, one can call upon the divine word that birthed it and manifest that word into being, which in turn chips away at the crystal as if it were writing chalk.
Two differing elementary Dust crystals of the same mass can be harmonized, that is to say, fuse them into a new type of Dust, merging each word’s properties. Only two differing elementary Dusts can be harmonized. Any other combination (such as two identical crystals, three or more elementary crystals, two harmonized crystals, an elementary and harmonized crystal, or crystals of unequal mass) results in a dissonant reaction, destroying both crystals and rending space in their immediate vicinity.
Etched onto every soul in Remnant is a word in the Divine Tongue that encapsulates its nature. This is the Theme of the soul.
Anyone with knowledge of what their Theme is can wield it as if it were Dust, calling upon it and manifesting it into being, but much like repeating the same word too much causes it to lose its weight, overuse of their theme whittles away at their Aura, the weight of one’s presence in the world of Remnant and the force which binds it together.
Each word in the Divine Tongue is derived from one of the six words that birthed Remnant. For example, the Schnee family from the kingdom of Atlas possesses the rare hereditary theme of Circle, its root word being Earth, reflecting the rigid, set-in-stone mathematical equations and formulas that govern a circle.
The root of one’s Theme can be called upon in place of its corresponding Dust. Additionally, a Theme’s root can be harmonized on-the-fly with Dust, the amount of Aura expended matched in the Dust’s weight, but is subject to the same limitations of standard harmonizing.
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