Silence trembled across the void.
It began as a vibration — faint, harmonic — running through the bones of creation. Stars shifted. Nebulae rippled like startled beasts. And far beyond the mortal plane, where the firmament folded into itself and the light of a trillion suns was caged in frozen motion, something stirred.
The Celestial Dominion was not a place. It was thought shaped into structure — an infinite lattice of radiant geometry. Rivers of plasma curved through the dark like veins of consciousness, each pulse a god's sleeping mind.
For ages beyond measure, they had rested.
The wars of creation had ended, the forges extinguished, and silence had been their covenant.
But now, silence was broken.
At the center of the lattice, the being known as Aeon Valis opened its eyes.
Eyes — if they could be called that — twin spirals of starlight collapsing and reforming with every blink. Its form shimmered between patterns: a winged serpent made of constellations, a figure cloaked in fractal shadow, a crown orbiting itself.
The Forge breathes again.
The words were not spoken; they resonated through the Dominion like a ripple through glass. Other shapes flickered awake within the lattice — faint silhouettes of gods returning from oblivion.
Impossible, whispered one — a voice like a collapsing moon. The Soulforges were sealed.
Not sealed, another replied, its form a chorus of overlapping eyes. Forgotten.
Aeon Valis lifted its gaze toward the mortal expanse below — that fragile ocean of time and dust. Through layers of broken creation, it saw the spark that had reignited the Forge: a mortal's heartbeat echoing like a hammerstrike across the void.
One of them has touched the Source.
The lattice quivered. For the first time in eons, fear coiled among divine thought.
The last time the Forge woke, murmured a voice older than light, it remade the heavens. We burned worlds to stop it.
And failed, Aeon Valis answered.
It unfurled itself fully now, vast beyond measure, wings of light spanning systems, form stretching through dimensions like a storm of equations.
Below, the mortal galaxy shimmered in its reflection.
Then what is your decree, Aeon Valis? the other gods asked.
A pause — deep, deliberate.
We watch first. If this new bearer is worthy, he may repair what we shattered.
And if he is not?
Aeon's light dimmed.
Then we extinguish him before the Forge remembers its name.
The lattice folded in silence.
But not all gods obeyed.
Far at the Dominion's edge, where broken halos drifted among the dark, another presence stirred — smaller, sharper, and hungry. It took the shape of a young god cloaked in shadowed flame, its eyes like carved voidstone.
A mortal, wielding what they denied us… it whispered, laughter trembling at the edge of madness. Then I will go to him first.
The Dominion pulsed once, as if the cosmos itself inhaled — and then the light shattered.
Stars bent out of alignment. Constellations wept molten fire.
Far below, Kael's forge-mark flickered against his skin — a tremor, faint but growing — as something vast and ancient began moving toward his world.