The Gate Appears

Overview

The Gate Appears marks the arrival of demonkind on the human side of Kaladria and the beginning of the chain of events that reshaped every kingdom on the continent. The interdimensional Gate manifested in the Eterna Mountains, then inside the borders of the Kingdom of Lindsey. Demons emerged from it, and the human kingdoms, which had spent decades fighting one another for supremacy, formed an alliance against the new enemy.

The event is not presented as a minor border incident. It created the crossing around which the later peace was constructed, made Eterna the centre of human–demon diplomacy, and ultimately required the foundation of the Tower. Volume I identifies the Gate as the point from which the Demon War followed; it does not establish a fuller account of its origin.

Kaladria before the Gate

Before the Gate appeared, the human side of Kaladria had been shaped by long-running wars between rival crowns. Those struggles eventually left six principal kingdoms: Helio, Agabah, Hikari, Chiseido, Norn, and Lindsey. Lindsey was already politically fragile, ruled by a succession of corrupt monarchs, and Eterna lay within its territory.

Demons came from a mirrored realm also called Kaladria. Their appearance at Eterna therefore made the mountains more than a disputed part of Lindsey: they became the physical point of contact between two realms. The human response was unprecedented. Old rivals set aside their existing conflicts and fought together, while the demons were unified under their king, Magnus.

War and settlement

Open war lasted five years. The fighting produced severe losses among humans and demons before Shun Sato, Reiko Hayami, and Kimiko Torafuku helped bring the conflict to negotiations. Those negotiations produced the Peace Treaty of Hope.

The treaty did not remove the Gate or treat it as an ordinary frontier. It made Eterna demon territory on the human side of the crossing, required a guarded Tower within the range, and placed the Gate under the care of a demon guardian. The guardian was forbidden to allow passage without permission and was expected to remain neutral in human politics. The post later held by the Lord of the Tower was thus created because the Gate could not safely be left without a neutral authority.

Later importance

The war initiated by the Gate lasted five years before the treaty ended open fighting. The resulting arrangement left the Gate and its mountain range central to relations between the human kingdoms and the Demon Realm. It also made the Tower’s neutrality a matter of continental security: later attempts to challenge that arrangement, including the First Transgression, were judged against the treaty created in the Gate’s aftermath.