Seventeen thousand epochs ago, in the chaotic primordial days when the multiverse was still young and unstable, two beings met at the edge of a collapsing reality.
The first was Zorak, then barely ascended to the Multiversal level, his power raw and unrefined. He had been fleeing from a pack of Void Beasts—creatures that fed on the essence of collapsed universes—when he stumbled through a dimensional rift and crashed into the second being.
Morth'ak had been meditating at the boundary between existence and non-existence, seeking enlightenment in the liminal spaces where reality grew thin. The collision disrupted his meditation and nearly cost him his breakthrough, but instead of anger, he felt only curiosity. What kind of fool would flee toward a collapsing reality rather than away from it?
"You're either the bravest cultivator I've ever met or the stupidest," Morth'ak had said, his form then that of a towering humanoid wreathed in silver flames.
