Warmaisach
Wait I thought our world was established to be created by the mage god in SGWM. How could this book also take place on earth? I could have sworn that the worlds Shang inhabited were “adopted” by the other realms at the end of SGWM. How could earth have turned into this apocalypse?
Theory based on what I know about SGWM. . . . . . . . . . . . So at the end of the book, Alex entered the Gravitas Mental Health Clinic which. At that point, he'd been alive for millions upon millions of years so unless the time on earth is slowed down massively, this could possibly be the result of entropy entering the world which could mean that prehpyx is actually entropy. However, since Alex noticed a miniscule change in the amount of mana, I would like to believe he would've noticed a change in Earth. Which makes me believe that the time on earth was slowed down to a miniscule amount after Alex left Earth and that the changes that caused specters and prephyx to appear was the cosmos being integrated with Mr bauer's cosmos. With the Archivist looking over aterium and Alex in the clinic, I don't believe anyone would notice the changes on Earth and if Mr Bauer deigned to look, he would just think of it as the world advancing. Of course I haven't read Lightning is the only way so that could also possibly gave more information that would help.