In the primordial twilight of the Mystic Era, it did not end with a whisper, but with the scream of reality tearing at its seams.
It was an epoch defined by the Cataclysm—a war of such magnitude that the heavens themselves wept ichor.
From the four cardinal horizons, the foundations of the world trembled under the march of four impossible hosts. To the North, the Deities, radiant and terrible; to the South, the Demons, a tide of living shadow. From the East and West came the two Prime Tribes, the ancient progenitors of the mortal coil.
They converged upon the center of existence, oblivious to the fact that they were treading upon the very heart of their makers.
As the four armies converged, a terrifying transformation took hold. The Celestial weapons, forged from the purest elements of the cosmos, began to pulsate with a sickening, obsidian light. They started emitting a Negative Malice Energy, a corruption born from the sheer hatred of the warring factions. This miasma did not just kill; it rotted the souls of the wielders. Despite the agony of this corruption, the four tribes, blinded by ancient blood-feuds, continued to clash, their bodies decaying even as they struck their final blows.
Then, the sky did not break; it dissolved.
A pillar of absolute, primordial light lanced through the gloom—the descent of the True Gods. These were the Supreme Rulers of All Realms, the Architects of the firmament and the creators of the four warring tribes. Their presence was a physical weight that pressed the millions of soldiers into the crimson mud.
"CEASEFIRE!"
The voice resonated within the marrow of every living soul. Above the carnage stood the Three Sovereigns, the Trinity of Creation. They looked upon their children—the gods, the demons, and the Two Prime Tirbes—with a mixture of divine sorrow and cold fury.
In a display of absolute authority, the Three Sovereigns reached out. The instruments of destruction—the Swords that could split oceans and the spear that drank stars—were wrenched from the hands of the living. They were swept into a titanic, howling vortex of raw ether.
The Supreme Rulers funneled the entirety of their Cosmic Energy—the very energy that sustained the realms—into this swirling mass, attempting to transmute the weapons into a shield for the future. But the collective malice of the four tribes had tainted the steel. The energy became too volatile, even for the Creators.
Seeing the spreading rot, the True Gods began to purge the Malice. But as they struck the corruption, the Malice fought back, releasing waves of darkness that began to stain the golden radiance of the Creators themselves.
The Trinity commanded, their voices echoing with a desperate urgency. "If we do not clear this filth, all creation will be swallowed by this Malice!"
The corruption was relentless, beginning to crawl up the ethereal forms of the True Gods, threatening to turn the creators into monsters. In a final, cataclysmic act of salvation, the Three Sovereigns channeled their entire Life Force and the core of their divinity into the swirling vortex of weapons. They burned with the heat of a thousand suns, vaporizing the majority of the Malice in a sacrificial purge.
But the Malice was stubborn. At the moment of total purification, a volatile reaction occurred. A deafening blast shook the foundations of existence, tearing the fabric of space-time itself. The Celestial weapons, still stained with traces of the remaining Malice, were ripped from the vortex and scattered across the infinite realms, vanishing into the void.
The Sealing: Centuries Late.
Centuries had flowed like a river of dust over the memory of the Great War.
Deep within the lightless heart of a forgotten mountain, the Sage remained. He was a master of forbidden currents, a being whose soul had become a fortress of arcane logic. Draped in a simple white robe that hummed with suppressed power, he sat amidst the silence. The very air around him buckled, heavy with the weight of a man who had spent a lifetime tracking the echoes of scattered, blood-stained steel.
The silence of the cavern was finally broken by a jagged, hollow sigh.
"Finally," he whispered. His voice was a cold rasp against the stone."The celestial weapons are all sealed with a powerful curse. The locks are turned."
But the Sage knew the truth: the Malice within the blades still hungered. It was an ancient, sentient rot that could not be destroyed—only contained.
His sunken eyes, clouded by centuries of forbidden knowledge, flickered with a grim resignation. Gnarled hands—veined like the roots of an ancient tree—trembled as they traced the final sigil at the heart of the arcane web.
The Forbidden Rite began.
His powerful frame convulsed. Broad shoulders buckled and his spine arched at an unnatural angle; the sound of teeth grinding together echoed through the chamber, drawing blood from his cracked lips. Sweat carved rivers down his weathered face, each drop hissing into steam as it struck the glowing runes on the floor.
Ragged gasps tore from his throat. His knuckles whitened, nails splintering against his palms as he reached into his own spirit, ripping the dark, primordial essence from his core. Beneath his translucent skin, his veins turned black, pulsing like serpents fighting to escape their host.
The weapons began to scream.
It wasn't a sound of the ears, but a psychic wail that shredded his mind. His left eye rolled back, the white blazing with a celestial gold, while the right remained fixed on the blades—unblinking, lid twitching with erratic intensity.
"For them..." he rasped, his voice crumbling like gravel. His knees shattered the stone floor beneath his weight. "For the vessels yet to come."
Four obsidian streams erupted from his chest, ripping through his flesh and cauterizing the wounds with dark fire. The Celestial Cage manifested, a lattice of shadow and light designed to bind the corruption of the blades to his own life force.
His body began to collapse inward, his once-mighty frame folding like burnt parchment.
"I command every entity! Every rogue shadow!" he roared, his voice regaining the thunderous authority of a ruler. "Bind yourselves to this steel! Become the seals that hold back the rot, or be consumed by it!"
The dark energy coiled like serpents around the void where the weapons throbbed. With a final, agonizing surge of will, the Sage completed the technique, stitching the shadows to the iron.
He rose slowly. He looked frail, his life force spent, yet he carried the poise of a titan who had just narrowingly averted a second Cataclysm. He walked toward the cavern's mouth, leaving the magical aftermath to simmer in the dark.
At the threshold of the cave, he looked out over a world that had long forgotten his name.
"Only the worthy shall wield them," the Sage declared, his resolve unshakable even as his body began to fail. "And only when the world breaks once more."