Editor's Note — Chapter VI
The Tortured Saint's choice shaped the Flood and its aftermath. The Animas could not prevent what followed, but they could give means to endure. The records speak of gifts, sanctuaries, and the Drowned—beings that live between life and loss.
Chapter VI — Gifts and the Drowned
When the waters rose, villages, fields, and forests sank beneath a wide, gray swell that seemed to carry the weight of divine sorrow and divine judgment in equal measure.
The Animas looked upon the world they had voted to scourge. The Conclave, its unity fractured by the recent decision, gathered once more. Chayim stood apart, her grief a silent, raging sea. Emet's light was dimmed with grim resignation, while Anani observed the unfolding consequences with inscrutable calm.
Chotam, the Guardian of Seals, spoke into the heavy silence. "The law is passed. The consequence unfolds. We cannot revoke it. But our Decree allows us to add new measures of preservation. We voted to punish. Now we must vote to save what remains."
This time, the Faction of Mystery found a powerful new ally. Yoni, her spirit shattered by her earlier inaction, now threw the full weight of her vote behind them. "We must offer mercy!" she pleaded. "We must give them a chance to grow from this, not just suffer!"
This new alliance—Mystery and Balance—was joined by a remorseful Chayim, who abstained from the vote but did not oppose it. The Faction of Truth, seeing the practical necessity, did not block the measure, though they voted with grim resignation. The vote passed. Guilt and compassion now held the majority.
Then came the Elementals: sparks to call fire, breaths to shape wind, pulses of earth to strengthen walls and hulls, water that healed and sustained. Those who could wield these gifts became lifelines amid the storm.
Safeguards followed—ethereal constructs to shelter vessels and sanctuaries, invisible shields against the lingering shadows. Emuna, the gift of faith, whispered into hearts: those who grasped Emuna could see through murk, trust the unseen, and summon courage. Talents—aptitudes unique to each soul—awakened, letting some fashion tools, guide survivors, or soothe despair.
Vows were spoken, fragile and binding. The strongest could anchor people to each other or to sanctuaries, threads of will against the current.
Then came the final, most profound gift. The Animas, knowing their own memories could be clouded by grief or pride, voted to create an eternal, impartial witness. From a shard of Emet's truth, a thread of Chotam's permanence, and the collective will of the Conclave, the Overseer was forged. It was not a person, but a process; not a mind, but a memory made manifest. This eternal witness was tasked to track the flood and all that followed, guide those who persevered, and note the deeds of Saints, mortals, and Blight.
Sanctuaries rose above the waters—not mere buildings but divine refuges. Each continent received some more, some less, placed where the faithful could reach them. For seven days they remained anchored to the earth, their doors open to any who could find them. But as the seventh day ended, these sanctuaries would ascend to the sky, floating like islands of hope above the endless gray, becoming new lands where humanity could rebuild.
The race to reach the sanctuaries became legend. Entire families abandoned everything they could not carry, trekking across flooding lands toward the distant lights that marked salvation. Some arrived with hours to spare; others watched from drowning valleys as their sanctuary lifted beyond reach, becoming one more star in a suddenly crowded sky.
Life in the first years of the deluge was an exercise in small miracles and desperate endurance. Rivers changed course; forests drifted like islands; mountains became archipelagos. Saints guided survivors; Fae watched from hidden coves; Shadows whispered still. Those who mastered the Animas' gifts laid the foundations of the world after the water.
Yet even as gifts flowed and sanctuaries offered refuge, the flood claimed many. Not all survived the journey; not all could endure the pain-laden rain. Those whose lives were taken or broken by the waters became the Drowned—husked, echoing figures, neither fully alive nor quite dead. They were not ghosts with will, but more like echoes given form, replaying fragments of their lost lives—sometimes a warning, sometimes a moment of care. They could feel, but barely, like someone emotionally stunted, forever reaching for a feeling just out of grasp. They drifted through the gray like salt-smoothed bone: sometimes guiding survivors toward safety, sometimes haunting them with memories of what had been lost.
Mortals feared the Drowned, yet some learned a wary respect. The Drowned were reminders of cost and choice: the price of sin, the result of sacrifice, the fragile line between life and what lies beyond.
A story survives—fragmented but true. A woman named Hanna clung to a half-sunken keel with a child's hand in hers. Through the mist she saw a figure—sea-slick hair and eyes like hollow glass—drift close. Hanna braced for terror. Instead, the Drowned child touched the small, swollen hand of the living child and spoke one word, thin as a reed: "Remember." They did not speak of where they had gone. The gesture—and the one word—was enough. Hanna rowed toward the distant light and vowed, later, to plant seeds on any dry land she found, in memory of the child she'd lost and the child she had saved.
Yet even as such individual acts of survival defined the present, a deeper, slower change was reshaping the future of all life. The gift of Emuna, meant to sustain, had begun to transform.
Emuna's gift proved more potent—and more unpredictable—than the Animas had foreseen. The divine energy they had poured into the world did not merely sustain life; it rewrote it.
During the Flood's seven years, as Emuna saturated every drop of water, every gasp of air, every desperate prayer, it began to work changes upon flesh and spirit alike. The world had been broken and remade; now its inhabitants would follow.
The first transformations went unnoticed—a subtlety of scale, a brightening of an animal's eyes. But as months became years, the changes could no longer be ignored. Great lizards that had basked on rocks before the Flood began to grow, their scales hardening to armor, their breath kindling with inner fire. Ancient oaks, their roots submerged but clinging to life, stirred with something deeper than sap-dreams. In the deep places where even sanctuaries could not reach, vast creatures of the abyss awoke to consciousness they had never known.
In a forest half-drowned, an ancient oak that had stood for three centuries felt Emuna crystallize its patient awareness into thought. When a Lesser Elemental of earth sought refuge in its hollow trunk, fleeing the chaos of the waters, the two essences met and transformed. The tree moved for the first time, pulling roots from sodden earth with a groan that shook the forest. The being that stood—part tree, part earth-spirit, wholly new—looked upon the drowned world with eyes of amber sap and spoke in a voice like wind through leaves. It called itself Thornwood.
Others followed: great Drakes rising from the depths with intelligence burning in reptilian eyes; Phoenix born from raptors' ashes and flame; Kirin stepping delicate through flooded meadows; Sylphs taking form from storm clouds and eagle's cries; and Gnomes emerging from mountain hearts, their bodies like living stone. These were the Pure transformations, blessed by Emuna's touch upon ancient essence and elemental grace. They were new to the world, distinct from the Fae who were the ascended legacy of Saints. The Animas watched with wonder tinged with concern—they had not voted to reshape creation so fundamentally, yet Emuna, once released, followed laws deeper than intention.
Saints who witnessed these transformations wept with joy, seeing in them the hand of divine creativity still at work in a broken world. But joy would not last long.
In the sanctuaries that floated above the gray, other changes rippled through humanity itself. A master smith named Tamir, who had worked his forge without ceasing for six years, noticed his frame settling into itself like cooled metal finding final shape. His Talent for metalwork had awakened fully in the Flood's first year, letting him sense the grain of steel, the memory of ore, the hidden potential in salvaged metal. He spoke to his materials with an intimacy that excluded all else.
As the seventh year approached, Tamir grew broader, more compact. His beard became a cascade of iron-gray that seemed to hold the texture of wire. His hands developed a roughness like worked stone. When he finally caught his reflection in polished steel, he saw himself shorter by a hand's breadth, wider across the shoulders, eyes like chips of granite burning with forge-light. The change did not frighten him. "I am what I was meant to be," he said simply, and returned to his work. He had become a Dwarf.
Tamir was not alone. Across the floating sanctuaries, Emuna amplified human nature into new forms. Devotion to craft crystallized into the stout, resilient Dwarves; communion with nature breathed life into the graceful, long-lived Elves; a focus on community and hearth forged the steadfast Halflings. The manifestations were as varied as human passion itself. Among the most misunderstood were the Ogre, their outer toughness a mirror of an inner, fierce protectiveness that had held tribes together in the face of annihilation.
Others still experienced a different kind of change. For some, their deepest connection was not to craft or element, but to the spirit of a specific creature that had been their companion, talisman, or totem during the years of terror. A scout who survived in the wilds by learning the ways of the wolf might find his senses sharpening, his teeth lengthening, and a fierce, pack-bond loyalty burning in his heart—becoming one of the Wolf-kin. A messenger who relied on the keen sight of her falcon to navigate the misty skies could feel her own vision become preternaturally sharp, her form growing lighter and more agile. These Beast-kin were humans who had internalized an animal's essence so completely that Emuna made it manifest. They retained the form and reason of humanity, yet now wore the features and instincts of their totem creatures like a second skin.
They were fundamentally different from the Beast-folk, the Pure-born tribes who had ascended from animal consciousness. A Wolf-folk, for instance, was a wolf first—now standing upright, gifted with speech and reason, but its instincts, its social structure, its very soul, remained that of the pack.
The two looked upon each other with a complex sense of kinship—and often, a territorial rivalry. The Beast-kin saw the Beast-folk as primal and untamed; the Beast-folk saw the Beast-kin as diluted imitations, forever caught between two worlds.
The Saints themselves were not immune to the transformative wave of Emuna. Their already heightened natures were amplified, their bodies and spirits responding to the divine energy they were built to channel. A Saint of Seras, the Burning Fire, who had always carried an inner flame, found her hair shifting to living tendrils of smoke and her touch able to kindle spirit as well as tinder. A Saint of Ruach, the Keeper of Wind, became nearly intangible at times, his form blending with the breezes he commanded. Those touched by Chotam found their skin taking on the appearance of ancient, unbreakable stone, while Saints of Emet spoke with a voice that now carried physical weight, their truths pressing down on listeners like a hand.
These changes were not a new blessing, but an evolution of their existing bond. However, for those Saints whose hearts were already compromised, the transformation was a disaster. The manipulative pastor found his body changing to reflect his soul: his skin grew pale and clammy, his eyes became large and liquid, able to see in the dark of confessionals but painfully sensitive to the light of truth. He became a creature of shadows, his "revelations" now carrying a compulsive, psychic weight that made resistance nearly impossible. He was a living lesson—a Saint could Fall, not in a dramatic explosion, but in a slow, chilling descent into a monster that still wore the guise of grace.
These Shaped Ones retained full humanity in mind and soul, but their flesh had answered to something deeper than genetics. They were neither cursed nor purely blessed, but changed by the marriage of human essence and divine energy working through Talents pushed to their limits, through Elementals bonded too deeply, through natures refined to their purest expressions.
Saints divided over them. Some embraced the Shaped as proof that transformation could be holy, that human nature magnified might birth new kinds of beauty. Others, rigid in their understanding of what humanity should be, called for separation, study, perhaps even "cure." Arguments raged in floating sanctuaries as families fractured over children who no longer looked entirely human. Mothers wept over Elven daughters; fathers rejected Dwarven sons.
The Shaped learned quickly to seek their own communities, to find sanctuary with those who would not flinch at their differences. Tamir founded the first Dwarf-forge in the aftermath, built by those whose devotion to craft had remade their very bones. The first Elven grove took root on a high sanctuary where trees somehow still grew, tended by those who heard too clearly the mourning of the drowned forest and could not bear to be apart from it.
But there was a third kind of transformation, and it was terrible.
Kael had been an artificer before the Flood, brilliant and pathologically arrogant. He viewed other smiths not as peers, but as rivals to be surpassed and discredited. The Shadow Kasem had long fed his envy. When the Flood came, he hoarded tools and salvaged artifacts, not for survival, but to deny others.
He reached a sanctuary, but when Emuna saturated the world, it amplified not his skill but his corrupt core. His body began to fuse with the metal and crystal he coveted. His skin hardened into riveted plates. Stolen tools and gears fused to his flesh like metallic cancers. He was no longer a man, but a monstrous, patchwork being of flesh, metal, and crystal—an Amalgam. His mind was a storm of envy and a desperate, screaming need to "add" to himself, to take what others had made.
Others suffered similar fates. Goblins, twisted by greed, emerged hunched and golden-eyed, hoarding and scheming in the flooded ruins. Harpies, born from spite, took to the skies, their venomous whispers capable of shattering alliances. Trolls, swollen with mindless rage, became beings of brutal, regenerative strength. Wraiths formed from Drowned who had been touched by Blight before death, becoming something neither living nor truly dead, feeding on fear and despair. Where human vice met Emuna's amplifying power, monsters were born.
These Blighted transformations terrified even the Saints. Were they still human beneath the corruption? Could they be redeemed, or must they be destroyed? The Animas themselves seemed uncertain—they had not intended this dark flowering.
Some Saints hunted the cursed ones without mercy, seeing them as abominations to be purged. Others, remembering that these had been humans once—children, parents, neighbors—sought ways to help them resist their natures, to prove that even cursed flesh could house a soul that chose good.
Kael himself became a test case. Discovered during a rampage, he was subdued and brought before a council of Saints. One argued for execution; another for imprisonment; a third for mercy. "I am a collection of my failures," Kael's voice rasped, a sound of grinding gears. "Every piece of me is something I could not bear for another to own. I cannot be unmade. But perhaps... I can be repurposed. Let this forge-fire in my chest be used to mend, not to claim."
They let him live, though watched. In time he would become the first of the Redeemed—cursed ones who fought against their natures, who turned their unnatural strength against the Shadows that had made them. But that was in the future.
For now, in the seventh year of the Flood, the world learned to reckon with three kinds of transformation: Pure changes that inspired wonder, Shaped ones that challenged definitions of humanity, and Blighted mutations that forced the question—can corruption be overcome, or does it define us absolutely?
The Animas watched this unintended creation unfold. They had not known that Emuna would work such changes, had not voted to birth new races from the essence of the old. Yet the gift, once given, could not be recalled.
And the Talents, which had been granted to all humanity, now extended to every conscious being—Drake and Treant, Elf and Dwarf, Amalgam and Goblin, Wolf-kin and Wolf-folk alike. The gift of growth, the chance to become more than what you were, belonged to all who had mind enough to choose.
Whether that was blessing or curse, time alone would tell.