The Aethyr crossed the Aurora Veil from Aethra Above during the Age of Falling Light. To mortals they can seem divine. To themselves they are a wounded people whose original mission, to prevent a predicted collapse of Myrvand's climate and of the Veil itself, has outlived its certainty. Their own records say Aethra was failing, though the cause is lost or hidden behind a few surviving phrases: the Quiet Sun, the Empty Choir, the Ninth Calculation.
Appearance
At a distance an Aethyr can pass for a mortal, and their faces, skin and builds span much the same range as any people. Their age is almost impossible to read: one who has lived for millennia may still look like a weathered adult in middle life. The surest sign is the eye, where fine luminous rings circle the iris, clearest in shade or dim light. Their blood has a faint moonlit sheen, and old injuries from their magic can remain as narrow glowing seams, like cracks in glazed porcelain. They dress for durability, in finely made layers of pale stone colors and deep blues meant to be mended and worn for decades.
Resonance and the long view
Aethyr society was organized in Orders of Purpose rather than bloodlines. This gave them extraordinary patience and one fatal habit: the belief that enough knowledge should make the right decision obvious. Their power is resonance, the shaping of matter, light, sound, weather and living tissue by forcing hidden patterns into agreement. Every great working leaves an echo: burns, bleeding memories, strange weather, haunted ground.
In the Age of Bright Works they ended killing winters and taught healing, astronomy and flood control. Then stolen resonance knowledge erased the city of Arkenfall, and the old question of who should guard dangerous power split them apart.
The three paths
That quarrel became the War of the Burned Constellations, and from it came three answers. The Crown of Ash holds that mortal war will one day destroy the world, so one immortal authority must rule. The Root and Tide Wardens defend peoples and wild places from annihilation but refuse permanent Aethyr sovereignty. The Returning Path believes the Aethyr presence has become the very disaster they came to prevent, and wants to reopen the road home, whatever it costs. Each believes it alone still serves the first mission. Behind them all waits the hardest question: can an immortal share power with mortals without ruling them simply by outliving them?