Before kingdoms.
Before crowns.
Before the very word "magic" held any meaning.
There existed a stable world.
A world where laws did not negotiate.
Where matter obeyed.
Where time marched straight—without fracture, without caprice.
Humanity had learned to name, measure, and master nearly all.
And it was for this precise reason…
That she was noticed.
THE GAZE
The entity did not arrive with fire.
Nor with darkness.
Nor with armies.
It arrived with its attention.
When the human spirit crossed an invisible threshold—when consciousness began to perceive the deep structure of reality—something, beyond space and time, locked eyes with it.
Ancient texts refuse to grant it a single name.
They content themselves with whispers:
The One-Who-Sees. The Devourer of Meaning. Abyssus.
Abyssus desired neither lands nor slaves.
It fed upon one thing alone: the coherence of the world.
Every understood law.
Every perfect system.
Every stabilized truth.
The more intelligible the world became, the more vulnerable it grew.
THE BITE
The first sign was not destruction.
It was error.
Once infallible calculations turned false.
Machines began to malfunction without cause.
Identical dreams haunted strangers.
Children described places they had never seen.
Then came the fractures.
Zones where matter hesitated.
Where time slowed.
Where thoughts seemed to echo aloud.
Abyssus was not destroying the world.
It was tasting it.
Every attempt to restore order did nothing but beckon the Devourer.
THE DECISION
Then, the unthinkable occurred.
The world—or whatever sustained it—made a choice.
If order summoned the Devourer, then order must die.
If perfection meant extinction, then perfection must be shattered.
The most terrible decision was made:
To render the world indigestible.
THE FALL OF THE VEIL
The Veil was not a barrier.
It was an accord.
A silent pact between law, matter, and consciousness.
When it gave way:
Knowledge was pulverized.
Cities crumbled.
Machines fell into silence.
History unraveled.
Humanity was not annihilated.
It was disarmed.
THE GAIA SYSTEM
Where the old laws died, something unstable took their place.
Magic was neither a gift nor a blessing.
It was an active scar. A survival mechanism.
This system was named: Gaia.
Through Gaia:
Bodies surpassed their limits.
Elements bent to the will.
Minds forced reality itself.
But every use had a cost.
For Gaia did not create order. It simulated it.
And every recreated order became once more a signal for the Abyss.
THE STRAY SOUL: THE BLACK PASSENGER
Amidst this organized chaos, a soul drifted.
A soul that did not belong to this era.
In another time, in another world, he was called Raymond Reddington.
He was no mage. He was an architect of shadows.
A man who had spent his life juggling secrets, manipulating empires, and protecting what remained of his heart behind walls of cynicism and blood.
But Raymond was tired.
With a weariness that sleep cannot cure.
His soul was heavy with decades of betrayals, bereavements, and sacrifices.
He had chosen his end.
He had welcomed death like an old friend, hoping for the void.
The silence.
Oblivion.
But the universe required his talent.
THE REINCARNATION
Reddington's soul was not permitted to dissolve.
It was drawn in by the unstable currents of Gaia.
It was a transition both poetic and cruel.
The man who saw everything was forced to become a child who knows nothing.
The man who commanded armies was reduced to the helplessness of a newborn.
It was a punishment disguised as a second chance.
Or perhaps the reverse.
The child opened his eyes.
Eyes far too deep.
Eyes that, though still too young to remember his past, burned with the instincts of the old world.
That unique capacity to see the invisible threads that bind men.
That propensity to turn every situation into an advantage.
THE NEW BOARD
To others, it was magic.
To him, it was simply a new currency.
A new breed of weaponry.
Raymond—or he whom he had become—quickly understood the golden rule of this world:
Eat, or be eaten.
A fragment of ancient text concludes this genesis:
"As long as the world remains imperfect, it shall live."
"The day a mind seeks to understand all..."
"Abyssus shall watch."
The child smiled in his sleep.
He did not seek to understand the world.
He would seek to possess it.
Unknowingly, his actions were already drawing the gaze of the Abyss upon him.
The game was beginning anew.
And this time, the chessboard was wrought of magic and blood.