Hahaha, it actually works out quite well. It's thematic for the world. This was my setup: Around 600 years ago the old world ended.
In the old world, humanity spread across the land, building great cities, clearing nature, and establishing homesteads and farmland. Dwarves and Gnomes excelled at industry, building mechanical devices and automatons in their blended culture beneath the ground. Elves kept to the old forests, observing the old ways even while they watched the land around them changing.
At the height of the old world, war broke out between the Elves and the Dwarves, with humanity caught somewhere in the middle. Savage mechanical war machines roiled from the depths, filling the sky with their black smoke. All of the elements rained down from the heavens indiscriminately. Fire burned fields and foes, water washed away cabins and contraptions, wind blew down silos and ships, earth crushed towns and troops.
In the thirteenth month of conflict, it all suddenly ended. From every pocket of nature, plant-life pushed forth, growing up through burned fields, ruined cities, destroyed castles. In a day, the broken places were consumed by immense, ancient forests. In a week, the wild nature pushed up against the last bastions of humanity.
Nobody knows what really happened, if it was the result of some ancient Elven ritual or the wrath of the gods. The old world is gone and a new one has covered over it like a scab on a wound. The Elves have only been seen in rumors of fleeting glimpses, the Dwarves and Gnomes mostly keep to the earth, and humanity ekes out a living, splitting their time between farming their fields and pushing back the ever encroaching wilderness.
Welcome to the new world.
