The night sky burned like a fractured mirror. Once, it had held constellations woven by divinity; now it was scarred by the memory of their fall. Shards of celestial fire rained upon the earth, each fragment carrying echoes of screams some triumphant, others damned. Where the fragments struck, mountains split, rivers boiled, and lands twisted into forms unrecognizable.
Generations passed, but the wounds of the Pantheon's demise never healed. Instead, they festered. Fragments of divine remains bled into the soil, into the air, into the very marrow of existence. Mortals discovered that to approach these residues was to feel strength pulse against their veins, a power vast and intoxicating. Yet for every warrior who seized such strength, ten more were consumed bodies warped, minds shattered, souls obliterated.
A complex order arose around this chaos: sects designed labyrinthine systems of absorption layered rituals, binding seals, and martial conduits meant to tame the divine corruption. Each step of the process was perilous; a mistake meant death, or worse, transformation into something neither human nor god.
From this crucible of madness came legends. Men and women ascended through ranks of strength measured not by muscle or skill alone, but by how much divinity they could bear without breaking. The strongest were revered as Vessels, but whispers claimed even they were but pawns of a deeper mystery that the gods themselves had not died, but slumbered within their poisonous remains.
On the edge of this world of shadows and blood, a boy gazed into the ruins of a crater that once swallowed his village. His name would one day echo across the lands, both cursed and worshipped. But tonight, he was nothing more than a survivor, staring into the abyss where a fragment of the Pantheon pulsed with silent menace.