SPOILERS. POI SPOILERS.
-rolls around on floor- NYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH SO MUCH TO WORK OUT T^T
The ever deepening, stretching roots of Temerilan, just what the FUCK is he dude?
The other circle... One that occurred naturally, the ones that may call upon Temerilan's power.
Temerilan who is not a thing or a person; he is, or rather it is, beyond definition. Yyestalla itself is Temerilan. Temerilan is the name for the manifestation of Yyestalla into a single place.
Think of an infection...
x.x but it has to be MORE than Yyestalla. It's Ijkar and Dreila, and the three moons, and the world of the Dwarves that they sought refuge in. It's the will of the universe that lay dormant... because everything was within tolerable balance.
The calamity with Hasaikali that loosed Starlai onto the Yyestallan realm was a result of Temerilan's rising, though he ultimately defeated Temerilan's will for the time being, as had several gods before him. He thought this was okay- by the end of POI, we realize it's really not and Temerilan is destroying the gods for the sake of existence.
Temerilan knew Hasaikali defeated him before he was forced back into dormancy, but could do little about it but direct fate to plant the proper seeds to allow him to come out of dormancy at the opportune moment. Starlai's agenda was the same, and her sister Vespitaph had initially been on her side, but when Starlai doubted her motives and loyalties, mostly because of the suspicious circumstances surrounding Rufalan's death, she disowned her and cast her into the void between realms. From there they started their war, the one which would culminate to the eventual creation of Asalleon and Veselteon, their puppet pawns in their battle against each other.
Oh god that finally makes sense. Rufalan created Asikira, the second Phoenix as we know them. Miashiu was the first, a horrible mistake that was locked away, entrusted to Starlai's watchful eyes. Starlai assumed parentage to Asikira after Rufalan mysteriously evanesced, following a tiff with Vespitaph. The obvious blame was on Vespi, though if we want to get super technical, it was his own fault. After Asikira, he had attempted to create a being that could sit between the realms, and be neither one nor the other. The act incited rage in Temerilan and the instability combined to tear Rufalan apart at the very molecules. That energy was re-woven by Vespitaph when she found it, just before Starlai accused her of being at fault for the event and shoved her into a spacial rift.
So Vespitaph took that energy with her, in the form of a very small, very dense being, a living black hole if you will. It wasn't the first, in fact it was maybe the fiftieth time Vespi had attempted to create one. However, in the past when she'd made living black holes, she'd have to have an equating white hole appear or her creation would destabilize. While this kept it stable, it also kept it from having the power she wanted it to have; the power to pull together the realms.
All effort to create something that could stay between realms was made as a measure against Temerilan, a manner of surviving that's beyond sending progeny flying through the big bang. Rufalan wanted it, Vespitaph wanted it, but Starlai knew that it was too dangerous. She desperately sought other means to survive the risings of Temerilan.
Vespitaph only succeeded because the energy she used this time was whole- it was the body of a god disassembled. It had everything she needed, and she need not displace anything natural. She was finally able to create him, but getting him to the realm of Yyestalla, where he could destroy Starlai's rampant endeavors to control reality, was the hard part. He couldn't pass through the spirit realm, which was the door from the void to reality. Only one natural being was capable of that, and it was in hiding even from the gods.
Asikira was capable of it however; this was discovered when the thing initially ran away. The truth of that information was hidden from Starlai, but woven into Rufalan's energy, where Vespitaph read it and used it. She used Asikira to carry her creation to Yyestalla; also leading another demonic being from the spirit realm straight to Asikira. Eventually Starlai found out about the mutiny, but almost too late. Vespitaph's creation had invaded the womb where one of her Phoenix children was gestating, assuming its place as a twin to the child that was already there.
In a rush, Starlai did something foolish and rash but incidentally the best decision to keep her power on Yyestalla. She took a seed from her hair, one she knew to be possessed of the power of Hasaikali just as the remnants of Rufalan had remained in the place he was destroyed, and created something identical and opposite to Vespitaph's creation- a white hole to counter him. Thinking that this would undo Vespitaph's progress, erroneously at that, she sent it into the same womb, creating a triplet. The two goddesses had hoped one or the other might die in the womb, killed by the other.
They were dead wrong- the two nurtured each other and grew as brothers, accepting even the third child that was in that womb as their triplet.
Now Starlai had been putting Phoenixes into random children throughout the world, strategically even. She would create one, and find someone whom she could manipulate that element through the best. In some cases, she did this just to avoid other powers from getting a hold of the same thing.
She had TRIED to send a Phoenix into Kanjasi, but the wild Tempest had rejected it violently. No room, it seemed. Instead that phoenix went to Jallai, who rejected the idea but whose base element would not allow her to actually reject the phoenix. She was forced to accept it.
After those two horrible experiences Starlai decided the carriers must start at birth, or before. As she completed them she laid the Phoenixes into infants, starting with Kori and Alijatra, then Taran. Despite being wary of Taran because of his phoenix's skittishness, she moved on, and in the next year laid Asitaki into Kai.
Late that year Starlai learned of Vespitaph's involvement with the pregnant wife of Rakhavis, whom Starlai had selected as the mother of her next phoenix, Fire. She moved the phoenix, in despite the danger, and placed her creation beside it, giving it the Water phoenix in case of any dire problem.
After she found there was no conflict in the womb she made a strange maneuver- she placed her last phoenix, Shadow, her oracle, into Vespitaph's creation. Vespitaph had no idea- she had been cut off from actually seeing where her creation went since she first sent it through with Asikira. The creation didn't react, and the presence of the Phoenix stabilized things further. It seemed the black and white hole were too calmed by each other to incite a riot as expected.
Confused but satisfied with the situation, and still contending with the descent into madness of her son Daire (that's a whole other set of spoilers right thur), she retreated into the void, where she played dead for a few decades and allowed her creations to run their path in the plan she'd set in motion.
Now Daire, he had found the Prophecy at about the time Asikira was placed into Taran. Going off what it said, and the suspicious actings of his mother Starlai, he assumed it was about him and because of influences from his oracle of madness, the water mirror, he began to obsess. He faced his mother in a brief confrontation, and the situation escalated until Daire finally turned his weapon on her. She struck back, but not without receiving a festering poison from him. Daire was disfigured horribly, and Starlai played up her injury to seem fatal, knowing that she might have to hiding if Vespitaph kept poking around in the spirit realm like she was.
The Water Mirror was possessed by the same entity of evil that had carried its way through the spirit realm and into Taran. It was a very active thing, but it had an agent demon that it sent on errands by the name of Shiukati. The evil entity itself was named Dasrevael and it did its worst in a lurking fashion; its sole purpose and drive was vengeance for Vespitaph, but it had been twisted into madness by the wiles of the spirit realm.
Daire's paranoia was fed by Dasrevael himself, personally. Taran was possessed by Shiukati, who arose in Taran when he was about six years old and used him to kill his family, the strain of which ended up killing the poor child. Decades later Shiukati resurrected the child, but as an undead, and used him to hunt Starlai's creations.
Dasrevael must have been related to Vespitaph's other demonic minion, Lyshyrric. The two were probably comrades, before Starlai exiled their master and separated them. Dasrevael was lost in the spirit realm, where he descended into the Empty Realm, a hellish place of infinite sight with only one door- the Water Mirror.
Looking into the water mirror was not looking into the truth- it was looking into Dasrevael's mind. While this was used to manipulate Daire intentionally, no one ever found out the truth about what was behind that mirror.
Lyshyrric was sent with Vespitaph, or rather, refused to be separated from her. Dasrevael instead tried to fight and was cast aside into the empty realm.
Think of what I just did here as patching a very big hole in a quilt...