At the very dawn of all things—before the ticking of time, before even the first heartbeat of light—there was only Eldawna: a multidimensional void, later named by the one called Shadow. A place where existence itself slumbered, waiting to be born.
In Eldawna, change had no meaning. It was not space. Not darkness. It was raw potentia—an endless canvas where realities whispered against one another, where possibilities bloomed and died in the same breath.
And within this infinite nothingness, Shadow awoke. He did not emerge as we know it. He had no flesh, no face, no beating heart. To mortal eyes, he would have appeared as nothing at all—for Shadow was the Void given thought. An observer. Neither creator nor destroyer. Neither light nor shadow.... a presence, ancient, and patient.
He studied the endless folds of nothingness, the silent hush of unborn stars, the slow exhalation of dying possibilities. Yet the silence grew heavy. The beauty of absence soured into monotony.
And in the endless absence of change, even a being of infinite patience could feel the gnawing teeth of boredom. Time was meaningless in Eldawna; days blurred into centuries, centuries into silent, aching eons. After all, how long can one watch nothing and call it purpose?
Sometimes, for amusement—or perhaps desperation— Shadow would practice weaving a semblance of form. Using the currents of the Void itself, he shaped a body from darkness: shifting, insubstantial, often crumbling back into mist. But no matter how much he stretched and shaped himself, there was nothing to hold on to. No mirror to confirm he existed. Just an endless, indifferent expanse.
He learned to make clones of himself. Variations. Shadows. But none stayed. None satisfied.
Until—one day—something changed.
Shadow —eternal, untouchable, unmoved—fell asleep.
Ranaesa The Dreamscape realm unfurled around him like a silken labyrinth—clouds blooming into mountains, rivers of starlight rushing through meadows of mist. And at its center, beneath a silver sky, he saw them:
At the center of the Dreamscape, two figures shimmered—beings of impossible serenity. Shadow did not see them at first; he sensed them, as if they were notes in a lullaby he had never heard but always known.
The first was a woman, no older in appearance than her twenty-fourth mortal spring, floating lightly above the ground. She wore a dress stitched from clouds, pale and weightless, and her golden-cream skin shimmered like the breath of dawn. Her short hair, a soft shade of blue, crowned her head like a halo of sky. Her eyes, deep as the ocean, held the weight of countless dreams.
Beside her, sprawled in a hammock of woven moonlight and stardust, strung between invisible threads in the endless dusk of a celestial dreamscape, slept a man—his body lean and athletic, carved in gentle, fluid lines like a sculpture touched by gravity only in whispers. A casual grace radiated from him, the kind born of countless silent nights drifting among planets and forgotten lullabies. The hammock itself shimmered with iridescent threads, each filament pulsing with soft bioluminescence, as if spun from the breath of comets and the laughter of ancient constellations.
He wore a robe stitched from the midnight sky, deep sapphire and dusky violet, embroidered with swirling galaxies and crescent moons that glowed faintly as they moved with him—no mere fabric, but a living constellation. His hair was a tapestry of the cosmos, each curl a nebula of its own, galaxies spiraling slow and serene between strands where stardust settled like snow. Moons, small and silver, drifted lazily through the locks, suspended by unseen forces, their glow a lullaby in light.
The woman, amused, floated closer to Shadow. "A visitor," she muses aloud, her voice as soft as twilight winds. Then, without ceremony, she kicked the man's hammock—sending him crashing to the ground with a thud that echoed strangely through the Ranaesa.
"Eli, wake up," she says with a mischievous grin.
The man groaned, rubbing his temple as he rose, casting a bleary, unimpressed glance at his companion.
"Was the kick really necessary? I was dreaming of far better company."
His gaze sharpened, and the moment their eyes met, the weight of his stare deepened. His irises shimmered—living auroras that shifted effortlessly from glacier blue to rose quartz, each one bearing at its center a six-pointed star, pulsing softly like the heart of a distant supernova.
These eyes didn't merely see. They remembered. They held the ache of ancient time, the wonder of first light, and the gravity of dreams too vast for the waking world to contain.
"Quit plotting death in your sleep and get up.", the woman insists, gesturing toward Shadow.
The man finally noticed him. In an instant, his posture stiffened; he moved instinctively in front of the woman, guarding her with casual but fierce protectiveness.
"Who..." he began, eyes narrowing, "who is the black mist?"
And Shadow for the first time, realized something extraordinary: they could see him. They could hear him. They could feel him. He was not alone in this dream.
Shadow spoke. His voice, soft and even, echoed across Ranaesa. "Where am I? And who are you two?"
The woman clapped her hands and bounced in the air, pushing the man aside, making him stumble. "My name is Irteia, Ascendant of Dreams! And this is Zelios, the Ascendant of Sleep. Who are you, and what is your Ascendant title?"
Zelios shot her a sideways look. "You always greet strangers by kicking me out of bed?"
"Only the ones worth waking up for," Irteia replied with a smile too soft to be teasing. Her fingers brushed his shoulder as she passed.
Shadow noticed it—a glance held a moment too long. A quiet gravity between them. Something ancient. Something earned.
"What are Ascendants?" Shadow tilted his misty form slightly, a gesture of honest confusion.
"Nothing yet," Zelios says quickly, recovering his stance. "Irteia, you can't rush his awakening. It's not his time."
Shadow floated silently, confused, but pleased to speak to another simply. These beings were strangely kind.
Zelios took her hand—absently, naturally. The way stars cling to gravity.
Irteia's expression softened. "I'm sorry. That was rude of me. May I ask what you'd like to be called?"
Shadow hesitated. He had no answer. Only questions. Only silence.
Zelios smiled. "Then for now, rest, Shadow. Perhaps the dream will reveal the name you've yet to speak."
Shadow, still a swirling haze of thought and form, wavered in the silvered air. His voice was barely more than a whisper. "I... do not know. I have existed in silence for so long that I cannot name my needs. Only... I am tired of being alone."
In Irteia's eyes, vast and oceanic, brimmed with understanding. She drifted closer, careful not to break the fragile tether forming between them.
"Loneliness is a heavy crown to bear," she whispers. "Even the greatest of us aren't meant to carry it forever."
Zelios, now fully awake, approached with an open posture. The stars in his hair twinkled like laughing embers. "Perhaps you've come to us because it is your time to awaken—to find your place among the Ascendants."
Shadow pulsed with uncertainty. "Awaken? But I am no god. I am... nothing."
Irteia chuckles, the sound like wind chimes in a twilight breeze. "None of us were gods when we first woke. Power comes not from what you are, but from what you choose to become."
The mist that was Shadow coiled tighter. He peered at them—the warmth between them, the life in their every gesture. "I do not know how to choose. I have only ever... been."
Zelios and Irteia exchanged a glance—an entire conversation unfolding without a word.
"Then allow us to show you," Zelios says. "Stay in Ranaesa. Rest. Watch. Dream."
Zelios lifted a hand, and with a flick of his fingers, the horizon folded—stars bending like reeds in the wind. A floating bridge of glowing dream-sand unspooled beneath their feet, forming with each step they took. His touch was subtle, effortless—as though the Dreamscape bent not in obedience, but in affection.
Irteia trailed her fingers through the air, and from the empty space bloomed flowers made of sleep: petals that shimmered with dream-memories, each one humming softly with lullabies long forgotten by waking minds. The sky behind her shifted hues with her mood—lavender when she laughed, indigo when she glanced at Shadow with quiet
A soft ache pulsed in his formless chest. This place—Ranaesa—it was peace, warmth, connection. But he had known silence too long. Would he know what to do with belonging if it offered itself to him? Was he ready to be more than nothing?
And yet, in the hush of this dream-realm, Shadow still felt it—something vast and wrong, coiled in the dark corners of memory. A presence not yet gone. A war not yet over.
Irteia floated beside him, her voice like a tether of moonlight. "And when you are ready, Shadow... you will name your purpose."
For the first time in countless eternities, Shadow felt something stir within him—something electric and impossible. Hope.
Ranaesa shifted, its silver skies darkening into rich shades of lavender and deep, dusk-blue. Rivers of starlight curled into more intricate patterns, reacting to his presence.
For now, he would stay. For now, he would dream.
Zelios and Irteia guided Shadow through the corridor, where lines of stardust and dream-sand wove intricate paths beneath their feet. The air shimmered with whispers of slumbering worlds, each step resounding softly against the cosmic hush.
"He reminds me of when I woke," Irteia murmured as they walked.
Zelios nodded. "Drifting. Empty. But watching everything."
"You were louder than him," she teased.
"Only because Hrolyn made me spar before I could dream."
"And made you recite your name until it meant something," Irteia added.
Shadow turned his mist-shape toward them. "Hrolyn?"
Zelios looked back at him, smiling faintly. "The one who taught us how to remember who we were... and why it hurt."
"And what to become," Irteia added. Her voice was softer now, reverent. "He raised the first of us after the Fall."
They stopped before a grand door carved from ancient wood, dark as the void itself. Etched into its surface was the image of a star caught mid-explosion—frozen in the moment between life and death, between glory and ruin.
"This will be your room," Zelios says, his voice a murmur of dreams. He placed a small velvet pouch into Shadow's hand. Inside, grains of luminous sand glowed faintly, pulsing with quiet magic. "This sand will help you dream."
"You are welcome to stay as long as you need," Irteia adds warmly. She floated closer, pressing a gentle kiss to the place where Shadow 's forehead might have been—a gesture so tender it left an invisible warmth blooming across his being.
As Zelios turned to leave, he paused at the threshold.
"She'll come soon," he murmured, more to Irteia than to Shadow.
"I hope she's gentle," Irteia replied. "He's not ready for what he'll be."
The door whispered closed behind them.
"Let's not lose another." His voice barely broke the hush. His gaze lingered on Shadow's door a moment longer, as if listening for the sound of hope taking root. Irteia's eyes shimmered with starlight—and something older. "We won't."
Without another word, they left him there, disappearing down the corridor like wisps of starlight fading into mist.
Yet something in him, something long dormant, urged him forward.
He stepped into the room.
It was vast yet intimate, a realm shaped from twilight and memory. The floor beneath him was crafted from warm moonstone tiles, each one softly shimmering, giving the illusion of walking across a misty lake under a tremolite sky.
At the center stood a colossal bed, draped in silver-threaded silk that shimmered like a river under moonlight. Its platform, carved from pale whitewood, gleamed softly. Four oversized pillows—clouds captured in tangible form—rested upon it, dyed in hues of lavender, sea-foam, starlight, and blush.
Above, a canopy of gossamer fabric hung suspended by curved silver branches. Tiny lights—like captured stars—drifted lazily across it, their glow casting celestial patterns across the bed.
To his left, an enormous arched window opened onto the infinite canvas of the Dreamscape. Galaxies wheeled silently across the sky. Dream-clouds swirled like living brushstrokes across a painter's endless masterpiece. A velvet seat, plush and inviting, sat beneath the window, accompanied by a hovering shelf filled with books whose titles whispered faintly as they passed.
To his right, a small fountain nestled in an alcove sang a gentle lullaby, the crystalline water spilling over stones that shimmered with inner light.
Soft glass lanterns floated on either side of the bed, their glow rising and falling like the slow breathing of sleeping giants. Above, a vast dome of obsidian glass reflected the drifting constellations beyond, so vivid it seemed he could fall upward into the stars.
Velvet rugs in dream-colors softened his steps. On a nearby desk, a waiting journal and phoenix-feather quill gleamed faintly with residual fire.
Faint music—harps, chimes, the hush of distant waves—murmured through the air, as though Ranaesa itself sang Shadow to sleep.
As he drifted into sleep, something stirred within the dream-sand. Before the darkness folded around him.
But it was not the hollow, formless dark of Eldawna.
This was different. Alive! Warm.
And then he heard it—a sound like silver bells and hidden laughter—a woman's voice, delicate yet commanding.
He opened his senses and stood once again in Eldawna's endless abyss. A pang of disappointment struck him. Had he truly escaped, only to return to nothingness?
A silhouette loomed in the shifting sand—crowned in eyes, cloaked in starlight and shadow. Its shape flickered like a truth he hadn't earned yet. It pulsed with the promise of destruction... or salvation. He feared it was his own.
Until he saw her.
A figure stepped through the mist—a breathtaking vision sculpted from the bones of the cosmos.
Her skin shimmered with the hues of distant galaxies Shadow had never known—blues, purples, and rose-gold pinks swirling faintly across her form like nebulae breathing in silence. She looked as though she had been woven from the dreams the universe dared not remember. And yet, the rest of her remained veiled in a kind of fog—not mist, but mystery—like a truth glimpsed in starlight, never fully within reach.
She moved with the grace of creation itself, and wherever she stepped, the surrounding void fractured into light—stars were born in her wake, galaxies spun into life. Nebulae blossomed like wildflowers. Cosmic storms raged and sang behind her, symphonies of existence breathing into being.
Shadow stood frozen, unable to speak, unable to move.
She turned. Her eyes, a binary sun of judgment and mercy, pinned him in place. And then... she smiled.
A smile so radiant it shattered the loneliness coiled around his soul.
"Hello, so you must be Qaritas." Her voice was no louder than a whisper—yet it cracked eternity like glass. She did not approach. She only watched... as if she were a question the void itself dared not ask.
Qaritas remained still—though stillness, like breath, had never truly belonged to him.
He had no eyes, and yet he saw her.
Not like Irteia, whose presence shimmered with warmth and whimsy—a dream woven of slumber and silk. No. This one didn't drift.
She arrived.
Each step she took across Eldawna's hollow expanse set fractals of starlight blooming in her wake. Light dared exist where she passed. And though Qaritas lacked a heart, something deep within him—buried in the coldest chambers of his infinite self—fluttered.
Irteia is beautiful... but this one?
Even if he couldn't see her fully he could tell she was... breathtaking.
And she laughed.
Not a sound, but a sensation—like silk and flame sliding over bone. It echoed through impossible directions, spiraling down memory, vibrating at the root of what Qaritas was—and what he might become.
What is she?
Why does she make the void feel... alive?
"The cosmos gives me such a flattering partner, the kind of partner fate saves for its sharpest games."she purrs—like she knows the story before it's written.
The words weren't just heard. They crashed into him—ricocheting through his essence like starlight through broken mirrors.
"You... can hear me?" Qaritas asks, flinching—not outwardly, for he had no flesh—but somewhere deeper. Somewhere sacred.
She smiled again. . But this time, something beneath the warmth was sharp. Like the edge of a star that knew it could kill.
Not with her mouth—at first—but with her presence. Her existence leaned toward him like a tide. Then her lips moved, and the air rippled like a spell cast between truths.
"Yes," she says, her voice velvet-dark. "Sorry. I forget how disorienting it is for newborns. I can read minds. Most of them, anyway."
Her words weren't just sound—they were gravity, pulling him closer to something that almost felt like meaning.
"You don't have a form yet, do you?" she asks, her voice softening. "That's why your thoughts leak out like that. You're still becoming."
She stepped closer.
The void bent around her, shivering under her weightless authority. Qaritas wanted to step back, to speak, to vanish—but the urge calcified into silence. Into awe.
How?
"How...?" he whispers, and it wasn't just one question. It was a hundred.
How do you see me? How do you walk here without falling? How do you make the void bloom beneath your feet?
She tilted her head slightly, strands of starlight hair rippling behind her.
"I was born like this," she says gently, as if she'd heard every unspoken version of his confusion. "Call me Ayla."
The name struck the air like a thunderclap in a cathedral of silence. It wasn't a command. It was a gift.
"Ayla..." Qaritas repeated, uncertain whether he'd spoken it aloud or only in thought.
"Good," she whispers, circling him like a comet studying a starless world. "Names matter here, between the cracks. They give you shape. Purpose. Teeth."
She stopped.
Behind him.
Within him.
All around.
Her breath slid through his being like wind in hollow bones.
"But don't stay here too long," she warned, and the sweetness in her voice turned cold. "This place— is Ranaesa, the Dreamscape realm—it soothes. It delays. It seduces you into forgetting what you were meant to become."
Qaritas recoiled inward.
What if I want to forget?
The warmth he'd felt in Irteia's realm still clung to him—soft, inviting. A lullaby for the wounded.
A place to hide.
And yet...
"You mean... my awakening?" he asks, though part of him already knew the answer.
"Yes." Her tone sharpened, now tinged with something close to sorrow. "If you stay here, you'll forget the ache. The hunger. The purpose."
She turned to face him fully. Her eyes—one a ruby star, the other a newborn sun—pierced his essence like twin blades of prophecy.
"And Qaritas... we need you awake."
We...?
"All of us who remain," she clarified. "Those who remember the Fall. When the First Evil shattered... and the True God fell silent."
Qaritas trembled—not from fear, but from the unbearable weight of incomprehension.
"I don't understand what I am."
Ayla smiled again. But this time, there was no comfort in it.
It was the smile of someone who had watched galaxies collapse—and learned to enjoy the sound.
"You are the Ascendant of Nothing, Qaritas. A god never meant to be."
She leaned in closer.
"And that's exactly why you must become."
The void trembled.
Somewhere, reality cracked.
"You must choose," she whispers. "Stay here, where dreams cradle you... or wake—and become what even the stars fear to name."
Qaritas pulsed with indecision.
Hope. Hunger. Hesitation.
I don't want to be alone again.
Then Ayla leaned in, her voice grazing what might've been his ear.
"When you're ready... I'll be waiting where the light ends. Don't keep me waiting too long, partner."
And then—she vanished. Her form dissolved into a spiral of galaxies, folding inward, blinking into a single, trembling star.
Qaritas stood frozen—not in silence, but in the echo of a name.
Ayla.
He longed.
Not for glory. Not for vengeance. Not for creation.
He longed for connection. For something real. Something warm.
I've existed so long in shadow... I forgot what it meant to ache.
Now he burned with it.
But no answer came from the void. No guiding hand. No whisper.
Only her final words: You must choose.
And then—
The dream began to shudder, and collapsed.
But when the stars blinked again, it was not Eldawna he found—but Ranaesa. The dream had shattered. The ache had not.