Before there were gods, before there was night or dawn, there was only the Spark.
It pulsed alone in the void — a soft rhythm between being and unbeing.
That spark was Aetherion, the first and last light.
He had no form, no face, no end.
He was the silence between every heartbeat, the question the void never dared to ask.
And from him, existence drew its first breath.
When Aetherion wondered what lay beyond himself, the void answered not in words, but in pain.
The thought tore through him, and the wound began to burn.
From his bleeding light, Erethis was born — a world woven from divine marrow and celestial flame.
Mountains rose like broken teeth. Oceans formed from tears that fell through the void. The stars above glowed faintly, carrying whispers of his fading consciousness.
But even as creation took shape, Aetherion began to drift into a deep, eternal slumber.
The weight of his own question — "What am I?" — crushed him beneath eternity's silence.
His body fractured, scattering divine essence across the newborn cosmos.
From those fragments rose seven beings, each carrying a portion of his truth.
They would call themselves Gods, and their domains were born from his ruin.
Each god claimed a piece of Erethis — one sculpting the skies, one binding fate, one commanding the stars, one taming souls, one twisting life, one devouring memory, and one ruling over light and shadow.
Their names would echo through every prayer and curse — Astreon, Veyra, Kaelor, Nyxiel, Drosen, Lioren, and Aseph.
They stood as rulers of a trembling creation, while Aetherion's body, broken and bound, remained at the center of the universe — glowing faintly, still dreaming.
And from the dust of that dream, another kind rose.
The Abaddon-born — not gods, not mortals, but remnants of divine sorrow.
They bore eyes that remembered the darkness before light, hearts that pulsed with echoes of the Spark.
For a time, peace lingered.
The gods ruled, and the Abaddon-born served.
But soon, they discovered the first sin of existence — the difference between being and creating.
The gods could form life from thought.
The Abaddon-born could not.
Envy burned in their hearts.
They questioned their makers, asking, "Why are we bound while you are free?"
The heavens answered with thunder.
The stars wept.
And war began.
Their conflict raged for a thousand suns. The skies split, oceans turned to glass, and entire constellations fell into the void. The gods called it purification. The Abaddon-born called it extinction.
When the war ended, creation itself was scarred.
From the ashes of that divine ruin, a shadow realm emerged — Sheol, the place of the forsaken.
Neither living nor dead, neither light nor dark — it became the prison of all that was unwanted by the divine.
The Abaddon-born who survived were cast into it.
Their cries echoed endlessly through the hollow stars.
And deep within Sheol, something stirred — the faint pulse of the first Spark, chained and waiting.
Though Aetherion slept, his light still flickered faintly beneath the layers of creation, whispering to those who dared to listen.
The gods believed themselves eternal.
They believed the first had perished.
But the void never forgets its spark.
> "Mortals should not have anything to do with the Divine — they might not live to tell the tale."
And somewhere, beneath all worlds, a chained light flickered — not dead… only waiting.