A crystal order devoted to discernment—revealing truth, deception, and the hidden architecture of thought.
Insight
Revelation of thought, truth, and deception; the mind’s lens, polished to discernment.
The Serythai are tall, slender beings with semi-translucent skin that faintly glows when thought intensifies. Their eyes are faceted like crystal prisms, constantly refracting light and emotion. Their world is a vast lattice of floating archives and memory-constructs.
The Serythai believe ignorance is the root of all suffering, but they also know truth can destroy. Their duty is not to reveal everything—but to reveal what must be known, when it must be known.
They rarely intervene physically. Instead, they alter outcomes by adjusting perception.
However, prolonged use fractures their own sense of certainty. Many Serythai eventually lose the ability to tell whether a truth is observed—or created.
In Book 2, Vear’s choice to pursue the hidden Automaton beneath the ore mines of Nyra leads him far from the known tunnels and into abandoned shafts and forgotten corridors. Guided deeper still, he is brought into a sealed chamber buried within the planet’s crust. The space feels deliberate—constructed not for miners, but for memory. Its walls are covered in spiraling inscriptions, symbols layered upon symbols, depicting the intertwined histories of the Skybound and the Earthborn. Though Vear senses their importance, the language remains alien to him, shaped by minds that did not think in human terms.
When Vear admits he cannot decipher the inscriptions, the Automaton steps forward and begins to translate. What it reveals is a long-buried history: the arrival of the Crystal Wielders on Edson. They came not as conquerors, but as teachers and architects, shaping a new world and offering humanity tools, knowledge, and guidance meant to foster balance rather than control. For a time, humans thrived under this instruction. But the teachings were misappropriated—used to dominate rather than harmonize, to extract rather than preserve. In response, the Crystal Wielders withdrew from Edson entirely, vowing never again to share their wisdom with humanity. As the Automaton finishes reading, Vear understands that the path he has chosen has placed him at the edge of a truth humanity was never meant to reclaim—and that the consequences of rediscovering it may echo far beyond Nyra.