ffxvi verse.
ardyn caelum was born into the beginning of it all. where towns and kingdoms were to be established , where the blessing of the mothercrystals were almighty. his story begins with three: an oracle , a leader , and a healer. he was a man led by faith , blessed by the crystal to heal the blight which had began to creep among the edge of their new yet unnamed kingdom. the more he healed , the more blight he would absorb into his once empty vessel. maintenance of the lands was day around , traveling long distances over weeks and months to restore farms to their former glory & comfort the towns which had suffered for way too long in his eyes. the blight would take his strength , stone beginning to form starting from his chest and spreading out.
it would not take long for ardyn and his brother to start to have differing opinions , ardyn pledging to his people that he would heal the lands from the blight while somnus saw his healing as only preventing the inevitable. for ardyn can only heal so much , & his blessing was a curse itself by offering the false hope that one man could protect them all from it. for the mothercrystal would protect them , & it would only be a matter of time before they must protect their land from those far past their own. somnus was envious of his brother for he was able to use magic without the use of crystals entirely , he was convinced that it was unfair that only he would have access to this power while the rest of population could not have it at their beck & call. the eve of the proclamation of their kingdom slowly had gotten closer , each brother backed by their own groups of supporters , as they stood in front of the mothercrystal.
the oracle had been in contact with the mothercrystal , that one was to be proclaimed rightful king , & would have the right to name their land & lead them to prosperity. yet , what led was betrayal. somnus proclaimed himself as the chosen king , as the mothercrystal had told the oracle. for it would not be long until ardyn would encompass the blight , that he would become their downfall. it was his mission to slay this would-be monster ⸺ but the blade did not strike ardyn , & instead struck his beloved oracle , aera. it did not take long for her to pass , & struck by grief , it is only then that the blight he had held for so long began to seep from his features. his brother's blade struck true & deep into his heart. it was then , he had turned to stone. unmoving & presumed dead, he was buried underneath an unmarked grave far , far from the newly named kingdom , sidus.
but one day , thousands of years past his time , the stone had cracked away. he is alive , & there is a voice which entices him. there is rage , there is betrayal , & it is only then he knows the truth. he was meant to be king , & somnus' kingdom will fall.
this is heavily influenced by @royalarms's ffxvi verse! some more notes:
just for funsies i'm marking ardyn down as the first bearer. as the years go by , more and more are born. yet he would be the first recorded one in history , at least , before he was erased by it. knowing how bearers are treated in the current age , it brings him another motivating factor to simply destroy it all. bearer's are cursed to die , so why did he not ? how dare these kingdoms treat their own people as such ? is it all even worth it ? (correct answer 4 ardyn: absolutely not, burn it all to the ground.)
ardyn is able to now release the blight he had absorbed from the land. since blight is a side effect of aether , it is unknown if this was meant to happen since ardyn was only meant to be kind of the clean up crew & he was the beta version of it. it didn't work , so ultima did not have more humans have this power. it works out in the end , however , as ultima may find ardyn alive & need him to wipe out noctis since he is activity attempting to purify the land. ultima is just waiting for the game over screen , so it would be easier to just spread blight , have everything disappear , & start over , than to have noctis continue expelling the aether he had been collecting via mothercrystals.
he might have or might have not been an influence behind the downfall of sidus , for it was the first thing off his checklist. it is only after a few years that he notices that the blight has given him a sort of immunity to dying , just as the blight cannot just be erased. he cannot use epic shadow teleportation , however , he is able to disguise himself as those who had been killed & decayed by blight or by his own hand. a few years after that , somehow ardyn gets whereabouts of a living royal from sidus. he begins to search the lands for this royal , creeping ever closer with a few encounters. it seems he is always able to slip away.
