Before Azurea Had a Name
In the beginning, there was wind.
It moved across endless stone and silent skies, restless and sovereign. Mountains rose at its command. Valleys bent beneath its will.
The world existed—but it did not live.
Vaelor stood alone at the heart of creation.
He had shaped the cliffs and carved the horizons. He had given the sky its breadth and the earth its spine.
Yet beneath the ceaseless whisper of wind, there was an absence he could neither name nor silence.
The world breathed, but it did not bloom.
So from thought became intention. From intention became longing. And from longing—creation once more.
He gathered the breath of the skies and pressed it into form. He bent the unseen into substance. And when the first drop fell upon barren stone, the world shuddered.
Lysera opened her eyes.
She was not thunder. She was not storm. She was softness at first—the quiet pooling of water in unseen places, the trembling sheen upon rock, the first river daring to move.
She did not know language. She did not know power. She only knew movement.
Vaelor named her.
He taught her the rivers and where they should carve. He taught her the patience of tides. He showed her how rain must fall gently before it learns to fall fierce. Beneath his guidance, she nourished what he could not.
Where wind shaped, water sustained.
And for the first time, the world flourished.
Green crept across stone. Life stirred beneath soil. The sky reflected upon oceans that now had depth enough to hold it.
They stood together at the dawn of civilization—creator and creation, wind and water, sovereign and sustainer.
Balance had been born.
But balance is fragile when power forgets its humility.
There came a day when the winds did not whisper—they howled.
A choice was made.
Whether born of pride, fear, or the intoxicating certainty of a god who had never been opposed, none would later agree. The skies darkened. The air grew sharp with something unfamiliar.
Lysera felt it first in the oceans.
A disturbance. A fracture in harmony.
When she stood before Vaelor, she was no longer the unknowing river he had once guided. The tides behind her trembled with restrained fury.
"You would question me?" his voice carried through the storm.
"I would protect what we built," she answered.
And in that moment, something ancient cracked between them.
The winds rose to dominate. The waters rose to defend.
Mountain peaks split. Oceans climbed the heavens. Lightning carved the horizon into burning scars.
The world trembled not because it was ending—but because it was choosing.
When the storm stilled, the skies were no longer sovereign.
Vaelor did not fall by blade nor by poison.
He was bound by wrath.
Lysera did not weep as she sealed him away. The waters around her were steady—vast and merciless.
"This world will not suffer your failing again."
And so the winds were silenced.
Vaelora, the name once spoken with reverence, was swallowed by tide and memory.
From that day forward, the world bore a new name.
Azurea.
And though the oceans calmed, though civilizations rose beneath gentler skies, the wind was never entirely gone.
It waited.
It remembered.
And somewhere within the blood of mortals yet unborn, the legacy of wind and water would meet again.