The Gods Gift Magic

Seeing that mortals cannot overcome the giants alone, the gods gift their followers with arcane and divine magic for the first time, escalating the conflict and shifting its tide.

The theological framing -- that magic was a gift, given deliberately, in response to a specific crisis -- is the dominant interpretation in Kyrell's religious traditions and is disputed by approximately no one within those traditions. The scholarly dispute, such as it is, concerns mechanism rather than fact: whether the gods acted in concert or independently, whether the gift was simultaneous across all traditions or staggered, and whether Arcanthos's role in founding the Orders of Wizardry represents a continuation of the original gift or a later administrative layer added to something that had become chaotic in the intervening centuries.

What is not disputed: magic changed the war. Creatures that could shrug off conventional weapons could not shrug off fire that did not come from a torch or stone that moved without being thrown. The shift was not immediate -- military application of newly-granted power takes time to develop -- but within two generations the tactical situation had changed enough that coordinated campaigns became viable. The Spirit Dragons, whose alliance came later, completed what the gift of magic began.