At the beginning of the cosmos, there was nothing but a stillness too vast to name. Drifting through it were four ancient forces—formless, silent, and eternal. They did not have names in the general sense of the word, yet they held a meaning in their own way.
They were Wind, Water, Fire, and Earth. Not entirely beings, not even ideas, but simply truths so old that even time could not measure.
They moved for ages without destination until, at last, their paths crossed and held. And with that pause, the quiet broke, and a world gathered.
Stone rose and shouldered into ranges, while water sought hollows, tracing veins through bedrock. Weather learned to speak across the sky, and from the deep, heat bled upward—teaching darkness a color.
It was beautiful—vast, empty, and balanced.
A perfect world.
But perfection, the four soon discovered, was not sufficient. Balance without growth is nothing but an empty dream. And so, they breathed intention into matter: a body shaped by Earth, a heart filled with Water, a mind stirred by Wind, and a soul sparked by Fire.
Born from that union were the giants—tall, mighty beings shaped by the world's raw will. They walked the ridgelines in wonder, tasted snowmelt at its source, and mapped storms by the tremor in the air. The elementals, finaly satisfied from their creation, scattered their essence through the land, their remnants of power turning into small spirits—seeds that would sprout when pressed.
And once their work was done, the elementals lay down to sleep. Forgotten, but never fully gone.
The making of the world passed to the giants, and the young world welcomed them as its new rulers.
The giants were meticulous builders. They revered the world, and soon learned how to make it their own. They learned the grammar of stone and season, raised homes that could argue with the wind, tunneled caves and mountains alike, and spoke to flame as a craftsman speaks to a stubborn tool.
But curiosity grew along with their skills. Some sought the meaning of their makers, tracing the flow of rivers and the secrets inside the flames. They studied the rocks, the stars, and the clouds. From water, they drew life. From Fire and Earth, they forged civilization. And from Wind, they pursued knowledge.
But knowledge birthed more questions.
What lies beyond the clouds?
What comes after flame? After breath? After death?
They sought meaning—not because they needed it, but because they could.
They forged languages that could hold mathematics and myth in the same breath. They shaped sorceries to fit the turn of their wrists and anchored stone to the moving air. Their cities gathered on islands in the sky until they were no longer in the world so much as above it—their civilization shimmered across the night like a second constellation.
And with truth came evolution: their power swelled, their bodies defied time. The giants left the surface behind and built a new nation in the skies—Pantheon. Below, the fields, forests, and seas became, in their minds, the lower earth.
They believed themselves heirs to the world.
And as a final proof of mastery, they fashioned beings after their own intention. Humans.
They were flawed, fragile, and short-lived.
But sentient.
Too weak to join them, humanity was left behind to populate the surface. And they, who grew looking up at that radiant kingdom in the clouds, called it Heaven—and built temples to worship the beings who roamed the stars.
The giants, pleased by their actions, accepted the gesture and crowned themselves gods.
But the world was never only gods and their admirers. For in the wild, beasts grew at alarming late. They, who were born of instinct and pressure, echoed the same raw energy the creators had scattered across the land.
Most of them lived and died as animals.
But some changed. Awareness soon found purchase behind their eyes. And just like the giants, the power soon followed.
Their strength was not a ladder but a horizon. A roar could unmake a gorge. A step could plant a mountain's weight in the air. Even then, they were scattered throughout the land. Tribes divided by distances so vast that legends starved crossing them. They posed no actual threat to the divine above.
Until one rose who changed everything. He carried the forest in his breath and the crown of dawn between his antlers. He stood before the heavenly gates and did not bow. When he moved, the sky remembered it had bones. When he spoke, it sounded like the answer to a question no Giant had dared to ask.
A being of sovereign power.
A conqueror who shattered the gates of Heaven.
A beast who challenged the gods—and won.
They called him the Golden Stag.
And with him leading the way, the beasts rose and shattered the Pantheon.
Walls that had held for millennia cracked, and islands that had been cities became falling stars. The Pantheon shattered, and its light burned through the upper earth. The civilization that had ruled the world for generations now vanished in blood and fire.
But the beasts were not like the gods; They had no interest in worship, order, or rule.
They left the ruins behind and rose to the skies, sparing humanity not by mercy but by indifference. To them, humans were insects—occasionally useful, sometimes entertaining, but never threatening. Some took them as slaves. Some, as livestock. But as the beast grew distant, humanity was mostly left to its devices.
With nothing left, humans could only rebuild once more—this time, not for gods or their blessings, but for their own reasons. Cities rose because hands were restless. Markets formed because people traveled.
But with no gods came no guidance, and with no guidance came no restraint. Greed bloomed faster than cities. Envy sharpened quicker than iron. Wrath burned longer than wood.
Desire unmoored does more than change lives; it shapes reality. Seven presences condensed from the tangle of hunger and divine residue still braided through the world. They were not gods, beasts, or men, but something assembled from the worst
each had left behind. They were called the Seven Deadly Sins, the origin of all desire.
They did not raise armies—they did not need to. A whisper, properly chosen, was more devastating than any army. Cults grew like dust on a mirror, and monsters soon followed, as reflections often do. The Sins spread like a rot beneath paint, and the lower earth plunged into chaos once more.
But it wasn't enough. Corruption has no limit.
They sought the sky.
The Sins rose to challenge the beasts and claim the heavens for themselves. The war that began made the whole world fall into ruin. Islands shook and fell, continents tilted and slid. The clouds wept blood, and the skies cracked under their weight. For the first time, the world itself forgot its name.
But at last, as their creation faced its untimely destruction, the elementals woke once more. But what they found was a place they did not recognize. Their power, scattered into a thousand small habits of nature, made their forms no longer fit what the world had become.
The beasts had slain their heirs. The Sins had colonized the breath between living things. And humanity, who had let it all happen.
The four measured what could be saved and found the answer cruelly simple. They opened a gate to another realm—one unseen, and untouched by the corruption.
A new world where the cycle might begin again anew.
They gathered what remained worth carrying: spirits that could still grow, seeds that might still learn, shards of legacy that hadn't calcified into arrogance. And without a word, they stepped across.
But they were not alone for long—for hunger is never still. The sins came first, and the beasts soon followed. None could carry their bodies through, and they crossed as essence and intention, as names awaiting a voice.
The world behind closed its mouth and sank into silence. Not peace, exactly, but the kind of silence a story leaves when it ends on one page so it can begin on another.
Beyond the Gate, an unwritten sky waited. And the wind—patient as ever—held its breath.