The Sundering

About two hundred years ago, the bonds holding the world together came apart. In the wider Honkai series this kind of catastrophe is simply called the Honkai; in Nexus Anima it's the Sundering.

Before it, the Nexus linked all things — above all, it held each pair of opposing Aspects (Love and Hate, Light and Dark, Life and Death) in balance. The Sundering tore that web apart. The severed bond-fragments took on life as the creatures we now call Nexus Anima, and the single world shattered into 81 Planes, each drifting on its own.

The old rulers who survived — the Sovereigns — became the Novarchs of this broken new world. Much of the cast's backstory traces back to this moment, and to the figure blamed for it: the World-Ender. Why it happened, and whether it can be undone, is the question the story is built around.