In the beginning, there was only silence, vast and unbroken, and in it no breath, no star, no thought.
From that silence came hunger, and from hunger came birth.
The first to awaken was Infinite Dawn, a fire without origin. He split the silence with light, and where his gaze fell, the void burned away. He stretched forth his hand, and healers were born, their touch mending the first soil. He stretched forth his other hand, and wardens of light rose, burning away the shadows.
But light revealed emptiness, and Dawn wept.
His tears fell into the silence and were gathered by The Eternal Ocean of Silver. She clothed the emptiness in her argent tide, filling the sky with reflection and dream. She gave mortals shadow to hide in, illusion to hope in, and sleep to escape in.
Her wardens, born of veil and night, walked unseen between breaths. Thus, dream was born — and with it, fear.
Out of the Moon's tide rose Fall Song of Waves, and his voice shook the silence. His crown was frost, his tongue was storm, and his song filled the seas with rage.
From his breast he cast ice, to bind and still. From his lungs he cast storms, to rage and break.
The waters were claimed, and the earth trembled.
But silence had not vanished. It only hid. And from its hiding place rose The Scarlet Matron of War, iron in hand, fury in heart.
Her tread broke stone. Her eyes split marrow. Her laughter drowned prayer.
From her veins came powers: one with arms like mountains, one with thirst like fire. Strength and blood — her endless gifts and endless curses.
Where she walked, peace was broken.
The world gasped under war, and in its gasp came breath. The breath of The All-Encompassing Rakashasa.
His skin was bark, his teeth were ivory, his blood was sap, and his crown was fang. Forests walked in his shadow, rivers roared with his laughter, beasts sang his name in their bones.
Claws of verdant hunger and roots of eternal spring were his wardens, binding soil and beast alike. Thus the wild grew teeth, and silence fled again.
But silence could not die. It returned as ruin, and ruin wore a face of flame. So came The Crimson Maw of Cinder, whose breath devoured, whose jaw cracked mountains. Ash cloaked his face so none might know him. Lightning crowned his brow so all might fear him.
His subjects were smoke and lightning, veils of death and fury of the sky. He laughed, and all the world burned.
And when flame had devoured, and ash had fallen, the heavens opened. There, in the gulf of night, a new throne revealed itself: Thousand-Eyed Starlight.
Her gaze pierced the past and the yet-to-come, and in her many eyes was written truth. Her hands carved runes into the bones of the world, so mortals might know wisdom. Her voice was silence, but in her silence lay prophecy. Even the gods bowed, for she alone beheld the end.
Riel had heard this poem countless times, it was beaten into them as kids and continued to be taught to them as adults. As an acolyte of The Silver Veil, he was supposed to revel in the moon and its dreams. The Eternal ocean of silver was supposed to be who he revered in but he could never.
For he has never felt the gentle touch of moonlight.
Riel walked through the streets of his hometown, his steps careful but empty of hope. The cobblestones were slick with shadow, though no rain had fallen. Every corner he turned, the world seemed slightly… off. Buildings warped in impossible angles, their walls twitching like the skin of some immense creature. Windows weren't windows, only gaping mouths frozen mid-scream.
And then he saw it.
The behemoth, glimpsed at the edge of his vision, a mass of countless eyes, each cold, each patient, staring through time itself. Its gaze wasn't cruel or angry — it simply observed, indifferent and eternal. The edges of the street seemed to ripple where it passed, as though reality itself recoiled. Riel felt the fire in his veins, a mixture of fear and a strange, unnatural familiarity.
Tentacles crawled across the streets, twisting around lampposts, snatching at walls and shoving them aside. Hundreds of hands and feet, too many for any human anatomy, scrambled across the cobbles. Eyes blinked from the ground, from doorways, from the cracks in the bricks. Mouths whispered and screamed simultaneously, words he could not understand, yet his mind recognised them as truth — truths that should have driven him mad, yet somehow did not.
Averith, the Mortal Sphere, stretched endlessly beneath the silver haze of the Veil. Below it, the Umbral Reaches yawned like a wound in the world, home to the first sphere of ascendants, and all those too weak to stand in the light. For most, it was a land of mundane fears, of petty squabbles and quiet prayers—but for Riel, nothing was ever normal.
He arrived at the towering steps of the Temple of the Silver Veil, its spires catching the faint glow of the moon above. The marble seemed cold, almost alive, and he shivered despite himself. Another day of lessons awaited him: chanting in languages older than humanity, inscriptions on paper that burned the eyes if read too long, and rituals that demanded more devotion than he could summon. Sometimes he wondered if giving up would be easier—but he was too afraid for even that. Death, he told himself, might be worse than the life he endured, though his heart whispered differently. He was a coward, and he knew it.
Slipping into his robes, the familiar silver and black clinging to him like a second skin, he felt the weight of the embroidered crescent moon on his chest. It was supposed to signify belonging, faith, protection but it felt like a chain.
Dragging himself to his usual seat, deep in the corner where shadows pooled, he lowered his hood over his eyes. He wanted invisibility more than companionship. He wanted only to be alone, to melt into the corners of the temple where the sunless light of the moon seemed safest.
Yet even in that corner, the world reached him. Whispers in the air that others couldn't hear, faint movements in the marble floor, shadows that didn't belong to any candle. A twinge of recognition stirred in him. The behemoth—the eyes, the mouths, the crawling shapes—still lingered at the edge of his mind, teasing, reminding him that nothing he knew was real, not even this temple.
And so he sat, silent, unnoticed, a boy in a world that had always been just slightly wrong, waiting for the day he could see something more.
"Some of you have been chosen to study at the Cradle of Gods' Chosen," the teacher announced, her voice resonating across the chamber. "And those chosen may bring a hand to accompany them".
A ripple of excitement and hushed envy swept through the room. The Cradle was the pinnacle of mortal training: only the most talented, the most devout, the most obedient of the seven temples' acolytes could hope to enter. Those who trained there became renowned ascendants, wielding divine power to cleanse ghosts, demons, and all the shadows that haunted the world.
Riel sank further into his seat, hood pulled low. Talent he had, yes, but courage and motivation? None. He had glimpsed horrors others couldn't imagine. The whispers. The crawling shapes. The cold, watching eyes. How could he face that?
Names were called. Some classmates beamed, others gasped in envy. Kaelith's name rang out, and Riel's chest tightened. Kaelith ; fearless, clever, endlessly compassionate — always looked out for others, even the ones who didn't ask for it.
And then Kaelith stepped forward. He looked toward Riel, catching his eye. A small, confident smile. "I choose you," he said, loud enough for only Riel to hear.
Riel froze. Choose him? He wasn't chosen by the Cradle, wasn't meant for glory. He was just… him. Quiet. Afraid. Closed off.
"You'll be my hand," Kaelith added, voice steady, warm, unshaken. "We face this together. You don't have to pretend to be strong, at least not with me."
Riel's throat tightened. He wanted to refuse. Wanted to hide forever in the corner. But the unwavering certainty in Kaelith's gaze rooted him in place.
He nodded, almost imperceptibly. Because he couldn't walk away from the hand extended to him.
Even if the world was terrifying, even if the horrors he saw would never leave him, Kaelith had always been there; a dream in the nightmare, a hand in the dark.
He may be timid and broken, but for Kaelith, he would at least try.
After the announcements, class carried on as usual, but no one could sit still. The chosen were brimming with excitement, as were their hands. Those not chosen sat rigid, minds elsewhere, imagining what might have been.
When class finally ended, Riel left the tentacle-infested temple, the shadows writhing faintly beneath the arches, and made his way home, ready — if not entirely willing — to tell his parents the news.