What is ７つ referring to in this sentence?


The following is text from the opening of the game Fire Emblem Monshou no
Nazo:

> おお！ 我らが母なる大地
>
> **７つを１０００も重ねた間**
>
> 絶望という時代あり
>
> 我らが 天に救いを求める事
>
> ７年と７月と７日の間

If I understand correctly, the highlighted phrase says that there was a period
where 7 "somethings" were repeated 1000 times. Does this refer to years? It is
not necessarily clear from the context since this is what the game opens with.




Nothing indicates it's specifically 7000 "years", so this should be taken as a
myth-esque, archaic-sounding way of saying "very long time too long to measure
precisely". In other words, it appears to me that it's a fancy way of saying
"countless ages", not "7000 years".

This odd-looking expression should be loosely related to the fact that old
Japanese (yamato kotoba) was poor at counting large numbers systematically and
the fact that 8 was treated as a [pronoun for large
numbers](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/51673/5010) (cf.
[八千代](https://jisho.org/word/%E5%85%AB%E5%8D%83%E4%BB%A3)). _Fire Emblem_ is
not set in Japan, but when Japanese people see an expression like this, they
feel it looks like an old myth or a legend.




Nothing indicates it's specifically 7000 "years", so this should be taken as a
myth-esque, archaic-sounding way of saying "very long time too long to measure
precisely". In other words, it appears to me that it's a fancy way of saying
"countless ages", not "7000 years".

This odd-looking expression should be loosely related to the fact that old
Japanese (yamato kotoba) was poor at counting large numbers systematically and
the fact that 8 was treated as a [pronoun for large
numbers](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/51673/5010) (cf.
[八千代](https://jisho.org/word/%E5%85%AB%E5%8D%83%E4%BB%A3)). _Fire Emblem_ is
not set in Japan, but when Japanese people see an expression like this, they
feel it looks like an old myth or a legend.

