Three shards of heaven
Ah, look at that, over there, that blue shard engraved in the face of that stone. That’s the shard of spirits. If we follow it, we will come upon a nelin shrine. I wonder who’s it will be.
The kyveno a ra, or three shards of heaven, is the most common and easiest recognizable symbol of Kysan, Garyialan folk religion. Their meanings are many, but mainly a representation of balance of the three realms; void, heaven and mortal.
Rise of the shards
After the burnt falcon and crystal heron subdued the chaos on Odezia, and Ynlaran, Nylena and Qhenenar were born, the Elden tree was planted, and the peoples of Odezia created, all seemed well for a while. But like the void, the endless darkness which surrounds all, the peoples of Odezia had a little chaos inside of them, and soon warred against one another.
The cataclysmic event of the destruction of the Elden tree caused the fabric of reality to tear apart. From the tears in reality, dark creatures from the void started to emerge. The people of Odezia, together with nelin who came down from the heavens, fought the creatures, but the tears kept growing, and there seemed to be no end to the monsters spilling through. Sulku, nelin of the Elden tree, gravely wounded after the destruction of the tree, started to dig a deep hole instead of fighting. All others yelled at them for cowering and hiding and not aiding in the fight until death. But when all seemed lost, Sulku returned to the surface and with them carried three large crystals. They took them to heaven and put them high up in the heavenly skies. And so, Sulku once again separated void from heaven from mortal realm.
Only a few small tears in the fabric of reality still exist. They make it possible for nelin to travel to the mortal realm, though only in spirit and not in physical form. But the tears also still make it possible for creatures from the void to terrorize the peoples of Odezia.
It is believed that once the three heavenly shards crash down, the world will be swallowed by the void and chaos rules once more.
Depiction
The three shards of heaven are most often depicted together. On the left is the purple shard of void or shard of death, in the centre the blue shard of spirits or shard of nelin, and on the right the yellow shard of heavenly gods. The shards can be found painted on or carved into rocks, trees, shrines, gates, chests, statues, anywhere related to (a specific) nelin.
While the shard of heavenly gods is never depicted on its own, the other two can be found solitary. The shard of void is regularly used on tombstones, and the shard of spirits on small shrines or along a path as a guide towards a shrine.
by Me
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