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The world was already broken back then.
Cities that once glowed with millions of lights and floating energy routes had been swallowed by the plague. The seas spat out corpses—people who had once lived normal lives on those same streets: workers, mothers, children. The air reeked of rust, rotting flesh, and something disturbingly close to defeat.
Civilization didn't collapse overnight.
It wore itself down until this was all that remained.
In a bay covered in fog, four figures walked.
Three brothers. Three beings no one ever fully understood.
Shastakan, the eldest, was silence incarnate. His gaze didn't rest on the landscape—it pierced through it. His steps were steady, each one more confident than the last, even as fear of failure pounded inside his chest like a drum.
Dionidos, the second, was a restrained storm. Every word he held back piled up like gunpowder beneath his tongue. He didn't walk—he advanced with rage, as if the ground itself owed him something.
Meridio, the youngest, was the heart between them. He questioned everything. He doubted constantly. His voice was soft, but his mind never stopped moving.
"How much farther?" Meridio asked, breathing hard. "I can't feel my legs anymore."
"When we arrive," Shastakan replied without turning around.
"That's not an answer," the youngest snapped. "What if we don't arrive? What if there's nothing?"
Before Shastakan could respond, the woman walking behind them spoke.
"Then we'll make it ourselves," said Seria, their mother. "Here or somewhere else. It doesn't matter."
Her robe was torn, stained with dust and dried blood. Her face was worn, her eyes sunken, but she kept moving.
Seria was more than their mother. She carried a past she never spoke about—mistakes she would have ripped from her own memory if she could. Things she had done on orders… and things she had done by choice. None of it let her sleep at night.
After days of walking, they reached a cliff overlooking the Abyssal Sea. The sky looked as if it were crashing into the ocean; the wind carried the scent of salt and burned metal.
And in the middle of that dead horizon… ruins.
An entire city drowned beneath the water. Twisted buildings. Invisible streets. Bridge remains that led nowhere. An ancient capital, swallowed by the sea after the polar ice melt.
That thaw had begun after the war of the year 3008—humans against a more advanced civilization. Humanity won the war, but lost the world.
"What is this?" Dionidos asked, squinting.
"A capital city," Shastakan answered. "Who knows how many years it's been underwater. But it won't stay down there. Not while I'm alive."
He stepped to the edge of the cliff, removed his cloak, closed his eyes, and stretched out his hands.
The wind stopped.
The sea began to tremble.
With a deep, thunderous roar, the waters split apart, retreating as if something massive were pushing them from below. Slowly, the city began to rise. Broken streets. Cracked domes. Split towers. And among the mud and stone, something gleamed.
Crystals.
Fragments of a transparent, hardened material—bright, untouched despite decades beneath the sea.
"It's incredible…" Meridio whispered, eyes wide.
"It's… mine," Shastakan said.
Dionidos and Meridio turned to him at once.
Shastakan blinked, as if waking from a thought that had gone too far, and corrected himself.
"It's ours," he said. "And with this, we'll build the future. Our future."
But something in his eyes didn't match that word our.
Weeks passed. Then months. Then years.
They worked without rest. Redirected water. Reinforced old structures with the crystal Shastakan controlled. Raised new walls over ancient wreckage. Where ruin had been, a new city rose—held together by will, stubbornness, and necessity.
When it was finished, Shastakan gave it a name:
Heart of the Dawn.
A refuge city for the exiled. A cradle for those with nowhere left to fall.
Rumors spread quickly. Exiles. The sick. People scarred by war or plague. They all arrived carrying whatever scraps of life they had left.
Shastakan received them one by one.
"Where you come from doesn't matter here," he told them. "Only where you want to go."
For a hundred years, Norgalia grew under his rule.
Structures floated. Fields bloomed again. Skies were cleared by technology that looked like magic. The brothers helped as much as they could, but they knew their paths would not stay aligned forever.
Outside the city, the plague continued.
It wasn't just a disease. It had been created as punishment—the final move of that other civilization before vanishing. A virus released onto humanity. Some called it a "zombie virus," but the name fell short.
It melted skin. Left flesh exposed. Forced bodies to stay alive longer than they should. Turned people into something that made you sick just trying to describe it.
Shastakan knew.
He tried everything: chemicals, serums, impossible combinations. Most failed. Until he discovered that Seria's blood reacted differently.
He used it to create a cure.
The first time, it worked.
The second time, too.
The third time, the cost began to show.
Each dose left her weaker. She walked slower. Coughed more. Struggled to remain standing.
Seria never complained.
One night, she summoned all three to the Tower of the Sun. Meridio and Dionidos came without protest. Shastakan climbed the stairs like a man walking toward a sentence.
"It's time for us to part," Seria said once they were together.
Meridio looked at her, frightened.
"What's going to happen to you?" he asked.
Seria glanced briefly at Shastakan, but she didn't accuse him. She didn't say his name. She didn't say your fault. She only sighed.
"My time has come," she replied. "Take care of yourselves. Evil is closer than you think. Closer than you want to admit."
Dionidos clenched his fists. Meridio broke down crying.
Shastakan lowered his head.
He said nothing.
That same night, Seria died. There were no lights. No signs in the sky. She didn't ascend anywhere.
She simply stopped being.
With grief lodged deep in their chests, the two younger brothers said goodbye. Shastakan remained longer, standing where she had been, without speaking.
Not long after, they separated.
Meridio boarded one of the cruiser ships created by Shastakan's government and traveled to Mars, determined to build a civilization founded on pure knowledge.
Dionidos took another and headed for Jupiter, determined to raise a power forged through strength and war.
Shastakan stayed on Earth.
In Norgalia.
Over time, he created a system to maintain order. He called it stable. He built an immortal monarchy: whoever inherited his blood would inherit his power.
And to ensure that burden didn't destroy them completely, he created something else.
The Seven Pillars.