It was the Age of Mortality.

When the Great Fire devoured the earth and all its inhabitants, some of the people who dwelt among the stars descended to the earth, and some among the people who lived beneath the waves ascended to the surface. These people came to weep for and pay homage to their fallen brethren, for they too had once belonged to the land before they had been taken up to the sky or descended below the waves.

For days, these people wept and offered libations for their brethren who had been consumed by the Great Fire, but the land would not drink it, for it too had been scorched by the flames, and it had become desolate.

The people cried out to the land and wept and offered up in supplication all that they had in order to restore it. They knew not that the land had become a cursed, dying thing, because it had seen destruction and escaped it only just. And its heart grew black from the flame of Sor-Azarael, and unbeknownst to the people, the land took from them their immortality, leaving them to wither and die with time.

Seeing this, the people among the stars and in the depths set guards in the heavens and the waters to prevent anyone from the earth returning to the sky or beneath the waves, for the people who had ascended and descended to the land had lost their godhood and were now considered unclean by their brethren in the stars and beneath the waves. The guards of the heavens were called angels, and the guards of the depths were called sirens.

And when some of the people of the land who had descended from the stars tried to return to the heavens, the guards of the heavens smote them with a foul curse, and they were turned into giant winged serpents.

It was for this reason the Elder Tai slew tens and thousands and tens of thousands of his brethren, until the star upon which he dwelt burned crimson. Then the people who dwelt among the stars countered the curse on the people of the land who had become winged beasts, and they were able to return to their former state.

But every curse leaves a mark, and the people who were cursed, though they had returned to their former state, were forever able to change form from beast to man, both they and their descendants. And among the people of the land, they came to be known as the Cursed Ones. They were the ones who built monuments to the Elders among the stars, monoliths and pyramids and towers of whitestone beneath each star belonging to each of the seven Elders. And the Elders who dwelt among the stars taught them the secrets of the stars, and times and seasons, and magic.

— Mother Aiko

High Priestess of the Order of the Moon Goddess