The Reckoning

The Reckoning is a cataclysmic event which supposedly reoccurs at each turning of the age. Many centuries pass, civilizations rise and fall, and the Reckoning returns to reap it all away like a wealthy harvest. Very few know many details of the event in general, but there are highly-disputed theories that there may have been a total of four Reckonings in the lifetime of the world. It is not discernible whether this is the complete truth or not.

In the current chapter of Last Light, there are dark utterings that a Fifth Reckoning is on the horizon. Evangelistic religions will sometimes speak of this prodigal event as being a sort of "rapture", where all the souls of living beings will be judged and then subsequently ferried across the River Styx as reward for good service to the world. This, like many things in the history of the realms, could simply be another means for bringing yet more followers under a particular deity, though.