The Ever-After And The Ever-After Wars

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The Ever After

The Ever-after is a magical plane that existed outside the ken of normal humans until the Turn. It has been described as "...a drop of time that got knocked out, sitting alone by itself with no past behind it to push it forward and no future to pull it along." Ley lines are the tethers that hold the Ever-After to reality, and are the source of magic to both sides of the coin. The only race that currently dwells in the Ever-after is that of the demons, having driven out the elves nearly two thousand years ago. Witches also formerly dwelt in the Ever-after but fled to the mundane plane approximately five thousand years ago.



The Ever-after presented in the novels is referred to as the basis for the 'happily ever after' that often occurs at the end of modern fairy tales; due to mistranslation and omission, the factual "in the Ever-after" (referring to a place) became the figurative "happily ever after" (referring to time).

The Ever-After Wars

The Ever-After, once a beautiful land filled with fog and forest, was destroyed by the imbalance of the Elf-Demon war, leaving a desert-like wasteland stinking of burnt amber. The first blow that started the thousand year war is unknown, lost with most of the information that existed before the war. Demons and Elves were the main instigators, both species having enslaved the other at some point.

Elves successfully killed most female demons, and cursed others to be unable to have magically competent and fully demonic children, resulting in both a population drop and a return fire on the part of the demons, making the elf genome unstable and less likely to have healthy children, resulting in a similar population drop. 

Demon children now turned out very different from actualized demons, instead becoming known as witches, stunted versions that as a result of propaganda, sided with the elves and helped curse the demons to the Ever After. The exact sequence from there is unknown, as is exactly how the elves achieved such a high rate of successful propaganda so as to turn the witches to their side.