The Erasure

The Erasure was a cataclysmic period, the specifics of which are nebulous beyond that it was "real bad". Traces of its impact remain in a region now called the Mark of the Erasure, thought uninhabited (and inhospitable) by most. Owing to this, and a wholesale shift in cultural values and practice throughout Hieron after the fact, it is epochal. Though most likely a series of concurrent and only partly related events, the Erasure may have been caused in part by the Heat and the Dark.

According to Austin: "'Erasure' should be understood by the end of Marielda as: The long period of decline that came after [spoiler for Marielda finale] and the gods' loss of the power of reconfiguration, which led them to fail to maintain the world as it once was. That decline was: wars, magical experiments gone awry, despots, the destruction of huge parts of the world, etc"

Origin

The vague nature of the Erasure was partially inspired by the titular cataclysm of The Yawhg.