Before anything existed there was the Welter, raw power without lasting shape. It could become anything and keep nothing. Seven beings found shapes that held. They became the gods, knowing that the Welter would eventually take them back.
To last, they made the Hallow and shut the Welter out with the Covenant, their own will made binding. They set it as Seven Seals. The Seals meet above the world at Heaven's Gate.
Undon completed the enclosure on one term: no sealing lasts. Each Covenant has an appointed opening. In the first age those openings renewed a world that survived. Its coreless natives lived on, and their dead passed down through Deopa to lose their shapes cleanly.
Then a native cultivated the will until he could climb to Heaven's Gate. On an Unsealing day he broke through it. He is remembered as the Skybreaker. The tear he left is the Scar. Pieces of the broken Gate scattered as Seal-shards, and foreign souls began falling inward.
The gods can recast the Seals, but the Gate remains torn. At each recasting a Keystone closes the tear for a Turning, as scar tissue closes a wound. When the Seals open, the Scar opens wide and the Welter pours in. Since the Breaking, every Unsealing unmakes the Hallow entirely.
The next casting makes a slightly different world. Land, bodies and possessions perish. The unfinished ground beyond a kingdom is the Mist, where new ground takes shape. The Mist is not a surviving piece of the old world.
Beliefs, not settled answers: Deopa says the Skybreaker remains in the Scar. Undon says he became a shape that holds. The oldest Human songs speak of an ancestor who saw a sky with no Seals. Sealborn believe nothing has ever gone out through the Scar. The Skybreaker's intention and whereabouts remain unknown.
Healing the Scar would restore the first age's renewal: the world would survive its appointed opening, and native dead could pass down through Deopa again. Undon's term would remain. That consequence alone does not say whether foreign souls would go home.
The Mnemoliths
Tellan keeps the Mnemoliths, record stones outside the world. Their Hall of Fame ranks kingdoms by Weight, heaven's reckoning of their standing. Their Hall of Discoveries remembers discoveries reached and their first finders. Tellan also keeps relics and the names and songs of Human lineages.
The Seals open in reverse order: Undon, Deopa, Tellan, Wefan, Aefenna, Daegred, then Virenna. Growth, day, turns, magic and record endure until the unmaking. Weight continues to be reckoned. The Newcomer's Grace still shelters newcomers after the last Seal opens.