I was going to continue on to the topic of evolutionary history, but I realized that before I do that, I should probably explain timekeeping, because otherwise no one's going to know what I'm talking about when I say “millions of cycles”.

While the planet that Avishraa orbits, Kastun, obviously has a “year” - the time it takes to travel around the sun - the impact this has on Avishraa's weather and climate is utterly dwarfed by the effect of Avishraa's own rotation and revolution around Kastun, particularly since Avishraa has a relatively low axial tilt or orbital inclination with respect to the sun. As a result, while the motion of the sun with respect to the stars has been recognized as an astronomical phenomenon by Avishraan cultures, its apparent lack of relevance to the world means that it is not often a component of calendars intended for general timekeeping.

(Another side-effect is that Avishraan cultures tend to ascribe less metaphysical meaning to the movements of the heavens than humans do. While they name stars and constellations, use them for navigation, and even tell stories and legends around them, only a few prominent or unusual celestial bodies or types thereof - the sun, comets, Kastun, sometimes Kastun's inner moons - are commonly held to have an effect on mortals. As a result, astrology as an organized discipline tends to be a fairly rare phenomenon, and lacking in depth even where it exists; serious study of the stars is something that's only begun to happen recently, in the Abethine city-states.)

In terms of local importance, Avishraa's “day” and its “year” are the same thing, and are both equal to its solar rotation period, mentioned earlier as about 54.7 Earth days. Having a time period of that length be nearly the only naturally-contrived and convenient unit of time measurement - at least that can be universally recognized - has tended to lead to a large number of arbitrary time units. A premier example of this is the Imperial calendar (yes, this is related to the Imperial language), which in one variation or another is the agreed-upon method for marking time for most of the takma cultures that have been touched upon.

The rotation period is called the “turn”, which lasts from sunrise to sunrise. Other units are all determined by multiplying, or dividing, by 36, some unsung genius of the Sixfold Empire having reasoned that if units were going to be arbitrary anyway, they might as well be regular. Turns are divided into vigils of about 36.5 hours; each vigil is divided into rests of slightly more than an hour each, and yet smaller units exist (though really used only by scholars). In the other direction, 36 turns are called a cycle, about 5.4 Earth years, and the rarely-used hexatrigesimal of 36 cycles is about 194.27 Earth years. (See here for a handy converter, courtesy of Dread.)

In relating historical events, cycles tend to have the same sort of prominence as years do to us, since counting back in turns would soon get cumbersome for all but the most recent lifetime's worth of events. Hexatrigesimals are the nearest equivalent to centuries but, as mentioned, are rarely used; the Imperial calendar divides history up into named eras, which together cover most of the portion of their history that takmar particularly care about and are generally more narrowly focused than a hexatrigesimal anyway.

So, next time, if I mention millions of cycles, you'll know what I mean by it. If not, the tl;dr is “multiply the number of cycles by 5.4 to get the number of Earth years”.