In the beginning long before calendars were carved into stone, before stars were named, before even memory learned how to persist there existed the Chaotic Era.
It was not simply an age without law.
It was an age where law could not exist.
Time did not flow forward. It curled, fractured, and sometimes reversed without warning. Space rejected stability valleys appeared where mountains had stood only hours earlier, and oceans swallowed continents only to release them back as shattered archipelagos. Cause and effect argued constantly, and reality often lost.
Life was born endlessly.
And died just as endlessly.
In that chaos, the gods emerged.
Not as creators with gentle hands, but as conquerors of disorder. Each god embodied a concept powerful enough to force reality into obedience. Ice that preserved. Fire that transformed. Soil that stabilized. Light that revealed. Death that ended. Time that measured. Countless others existed then, though many of their names were erased along with the worlds they once ruled.
At first, the gods worked together.
They drove back chaos with authority alone. They chained time into a single direction. They pinned space into meaning. They forced existence to follow rules.
Seasons formed.
Life endured.
Civilizations rose beneath divine shadows.
Mortals worshipped them not out of faith, but survival. To please a god meant safety. To anger one meant erasure.
For a time, it worked.
But infinity breeds comparison.
And comparison breeds envy.
With no equals above them and no end ahead of them, the gods began to measure one another. Whose authority was purer. Whose concept was more essential. Whose rule deserved to stand above the rest.
Pride hardened.
Ambition sharpened.
The Divine War did not begin with a declaration.
It began with silence.
One god acted. Another responded. Authority clashed against authority, and the strain cracked reality itself. Mountains collapsed into dust. Oceans boiled into the sky. Entire races vanished mid-thought, their histories erased before they could even be mourned.
The heavens fractured.
Gods fell.
Not into death because gods did not die easily but into ruin. Their divine bodies shattered, yet divinity itself could not be destroyed. It scattered across the broken world like fragments of a shattered crown.
These remnants became known as Divine Essence.
Anyone who merged with one inherited a spark of godhood enough power to rule nations, enough authority to threaten the balance the gods themselves had failed to maintain.
As the war reached its end, the few surviving gods made a desperate choice.
They sealed themselves away.
But before retreating from the world they had nearly destroyed, they left behind Blood.
Not symbols.
Not myths.
Real blood.
Divine blood infused into chosen mortals, diluted enough to persist, potent enough to awaken. These Bloodlines carried fragments of a god's authority, memory, and compatibility. Over generations, they became families, clans, dynasties each tied to a fallen god's legacy.
Seven Bloodlines rose above all others.
Seven veins of divinity that endured when countless others faded.
Ancient prophecy declared that only those born of these Bloodlines could ascend the Throne of the Gods and restore order without repeating the Chaotic Era.
Or so the prophecy claimed.
*********
(New Era — NE)
Year: 1977 NE
Date: 26/07
Place: Castle of the Frozenlight
The Ice Throne dominated the hall, carved from innumerable layers of enchanted ice. Each layer hummed softly, heavy with restrained authority. Cold was not merely present here it ruled.
Upon the throne sat a young man.
Calling him a boy would be disrespectful.
Calling him a man would be incomplete.
Bluish-white hair framed a pale face untouched by age. His body radiated crystalline clarity, every line precise, every breath measured.
Yet crimson blood flowed from his chest.
Divine blood.
It spilled from a wound where his heart had been pierced, staining the ice beneath him in violent contrast. Warm red against eternal frost.
"Why?"
The word carried no anger.
Only calm.
It echoed through the vast hall and reached the shadows gathered beyond the great doors figures twisted and indistinct, as though reality itself rejected their presence.
They laughed.
A sound that scraped against existence.
"Why?" the voices overlapped unnaturally.
"Because He does not wish this world to exist."
"An ancient prophecy speaks of a being who should never have been born."
The young man's eyes narrowed slightly.
"The remaining gods have decided," the shadows continued, "to erase this dimension and all life within it."
Silence fell.
Then—
The temperature plummeted.
Ice erupted from the floor like living thorns, freezing not flesh, but essence itself. One of the shadows screamed as frost devoured its form, its existence locked into stillness.
"Your world harbors anomalies," it rasped desperately.
"You will not live long, god of this world. Soon, it too shall perish."
The curse completed.
The creature froze mid-syllable, sealed into eternal slumber.
The young man rose from the throne.
North Frozenlight the God of Preservation, Lord of Stillness and Ice.
Though he appeared barely older than a youth, he had lived for over three centuries. Ice preserved him, halting his aging at the edge of adolescence, leaving his body flawless and unchanged.
He placed a hand over his pierced chest.
With a whisper of will, the blood froze instantly, sealing the wound in crystalline ice.
A thin beam of light slipped through a crack in the ceiling, illuminating his face empty, distant, untouched by fear or triumph.
He walked toward the massive doors.
Creeeak—
They opened onto a battlefield drenched in snow and shadow. Blackened corpses littered the ground, corrupted blood soaking into white frost. The air trembled with dying concepts.
On the horizon, six gods still fought, their clashes tearing the sky apart.
North reached for his weapon.
His body leaned forward.
One step—
"Hey! North! Wake up!"
The voice shattered the world.
"Mom's calling us for breakfast!"
Another voice followed, warm and teasing.
"You're not a kid anymore but you're barely a god! More like a newborn one, so stop brooding and get up!"
The battlefield collapsed.
The ice throne vanished.
The screams dissolved into silence.
North's eyes snapped open.
He sat upright in a quiet room, pale morning light spilling across familiar walls.
"…Another nightmare," he murmured.
His breath was steady.
His heart calm.
Yet his hand hovered over his chest.
For just a moment—
The ice there felt warm.
And somewhere far beyond the reach of dreams, something laughed softly, as if pleased that the memory still cut deep enough to bleed.