The Dragon's Return, roughly 1100 years after the imprisonment of Malnaar, during a time when the kingdoms of the one great landmass were enjoying a period of relative peace and prosperity.
When the last of the Gul'durak, the Fesselschmiede whose bloodline held his chains, were murdered in a single night, the binding lost its debtor. It turned hungry and fed the one body still caged inside it. Malnaar, the ancient dragon whose tyranny had once cast a shadow over the entire world, broke free.
His deafening roars echoed across the lands. Malnaar did not escape out of hunger alone but out of revenge: to make the world atone for locking him away, and to show that he was there.
The first to feel his fury was Quer'ta, a bustling pirate city in the south known for its lawlessness and debauchery. The city was utterly destroyed, flames consuming everything in their path and leaving nothing but ruins.
Quer'ta was only the beginning. Malnaar tore the one original landmass apart into two continents. The Break, the island strait between the western and central continent, is the wound; its islands are the debris. This is the Shattering, and it gave the world its name: The Shattered World.
There was no second imprisonment. No coalition could be raised from a world that had just been broken, and no Gul'durak remained to forge new chains.