The fires of unrestrained magical aether brought ruin to the world, and the ruin of the world brought magic to the hands of humanity. Paragons and their shards of divinity were the first to wield magic by will alone, and Saints soon followed, channeling their magic through physical conduits, be they staves, astrolabes, holy texts, or any other myriad foci that arose from the diverse traditions of humanity's scattered embers. Eventually, even the least aetherically sensitive come to wield magic through sigils, inscriptions, and charms, which quickly proliferated across the whole of Aifrah.
The end of the Age of Cinders finds magic commonplace, its properties well-understood and stripped of divine necessity, with only a single exception. Healing magic alone remained the purview of divine blessing and the study of healing magic strictly forbidden. Humanity's first forays into the study of healing magic produced results so horrifying, so indescribably cruel, that the subject was strictly and unanimously forbidden. Those terrible few bold enough to dare were met with simple justice: their research was turned upon them. In the face of such a punishment, death was considered a mercy. After a time, the academic study of healing magic had all but vanished, leaving it solely in the hands of those that carry the dubious blessing of divine healing magic.
Academic magic came to encompass all manners of practical and martial spellcasting, while healing magic was considered a tolerated art. Precious few healers gained some deal of regard. By and large, they were relegated to aiding soldiers and mercenaries in the midst of combat or providing for far-flung settlements without the infrastructure to support non-magical healing. The divine spark of healing magic carried with it a profound, unconscious understanding of every aspect of physiology woven into the healer's very intuition necessary to repair the human body with magic. Medicine became the purview of the mundane, the elegant alternative to the harrowing ordeal of magical healing. Even a single source of non-magical medicine became the mark of a well-developed town, whereas those without were commonly regarded as either fledgling settlements, backwater villages, or little more than a cluster of farmers and their families.