The Endarkened Chronicles Book 1: Forlorn

It was a world like any other. A sphere in a great black void. Blue skies and green seas. It was once a world with many mostly isolated nations. The people here were diverse in culture and appearance and they named their world Reathen. There was a troubling element found on this world. This force was dark and foreboding. The people called it the Endark. It had always been there, found hanging amongst abandoned villages and buildings, hovering over forests where things stopped growing, clinging and wrapping around bodies that had been left alone for too long. It made those who came into contact with it sick, fatally sick, so it was avoided at all costs. For most of history it was a minor hazard drifting like slow fog along the mid-morning sun. No one really paid it much heed until the first village was consumed.

The nation of Abasteine, and its great city of Abaelon, had long ago developed crystal stones interwoven with light born of magic that kept the Endark at bay. Great alabaster walls capped with gold contained many of these lightstones used to keep the island continent isolated from the Endark, and consequently the rest of the world. Although they kept to themselves, they did send shipments of lightstone to villages and cities in need. Even so, the light infused stones didn't last long away from the city, and it was impossible to predict the exact time they would fail. The request for lightstone began to decline as the people who needed them disappeared.