The decline began at sundown.
Kairos, Veyra, Arius, and Riven stood at the edge of the Scar of Time—a rent in reality radiating raw soullight. It was the only known entrance to the Pre-Cycle Realms. To enter was to forget, self. and the certainty of cause and effect.
Kairos drew breath. "We enter together. Whatever we forget—hold tight."
They entered.
---
The world shifted in an instant.
There was no air. No earth. Only infinite curves of shadow and light, swirling like currents of mind. Whispers in the void—half-remembered names, un-lived sensations, tongue-spills from forgotten dawns.
Memory unwound here like string.
Veyra gasped for air. "My magic—it's unraveling inside out."
Arius dropped to one knee, holding his temples. "Time doesn't pass here. It folds."
Riven blipped in and out of existence. "I'm being overwritten… by versions of me that never existed."
Kairos alone stood firm.
The Soulforger mark on his palm pounded with golden power, anchoring him in this storm of unbeing.
"I remember who I am," he gulped. "I chose to be this."
He focused—and a way was illuminated before their feet. Each advance deprived them of something: an unremembered name, a childhood memory, an odor of an old lover. And they moved forward, nonetheless.
And finally, they arrived at it.
---
And at its hub, there existed a huge entrance of bone and light.
The First Door.
Its surface smoldered with an endless runes—each of which a never-lived soul.
As they drew near, a figure emerged: a guardian made of dream and iron, ancient and angry.
> "Who is so audacious as to come seeking the Source?"
Kairos continued. "We come in search of the Crown's truth. We come in search of the First Life."
The guardian regarded them.
"You carry the Flame of Renewal," it declared, leaning towards the Soulforger's seal. "Then you may depart—but warned: the truth shall not be lost."
The door creaked open.
---
Inside: The Forge of Origins.
It was not a place—it was every place, simultaneously. A grand crucible of soulsteel floated in the midst, suspended within eternality. The First Life clustered about it, reverberations:
A galaxy-conceived woman.
A thing that arose from nothing.
A shadow-crowned child with golden eyes.
Kairos dropped to his knees.
He remembered now.
Before reincarnation, before the cycle—there was one lonely soul. It divided itself into countless lives, into fate, time, and mortality. It created the world to recall its loneliness.
And from that wound… the Eclipsed Crown.
It wasn't a thing. It was a choice. A choice made at the start of creation:
If I cannot forget, then I shall rule. If I cannot be whole, then I shall be infinite."
And that fragment—the part of the First Life that would not yield—remained.
Waiting still.
Calling still.
---
Then the Forge shook.
From its depths emerged a figure—a Kairos unlike any other. Towering. Untroubled. Crowned.
He wore no armor, but his presence burned. He looked at Kairos with limitless sorrow.
"I am who you may think you once were," he said to them. "The vessel of the Crown."
Kairos tightened his fist, preparing to strike.
But the Crowned Kairos only said:
> "I need you to kill me. Or join me. There is no other."
And behind him, the Eclipsed Crown floated in the air—pulsating with still power, aching for its wearer.
Riven drew a sharp breath, "This is it."
Veyra's magic ignited, uncontrolled. "Whatever you do, we obey."
Arius drew his sword. "Make it count."
Kairos proceeded.
Examining the Crown.
---