Chapter Text
Long before kingdoms carved their names into history, before civilizations reached toward the heavens in search of meaning, and before stars were charted across the endless sky, the universe existed in a silence so profound that even time itself seemed content to drift without purpose. There were no wars to be fought, no empires to conquer, no legends to remember. The worlds that would one day teem with life had yet to awaken, and the endless expanse beyond them remained untouched, vast and still.
That silence was never destined to last.
As ages passed, countless universes were born from the fabric of existence, each carrying its own skies, oceans, mountains, and people. Entire civilizations rose beneath unfamiliar constellations, believing themselves to be alone in an infinite cosmos. They built magnificent cities, discovered impossible sciences, worshipped unseen deities, and wrote stories they believed would outlive them. Some dreamed of peace. Others sought only power. None of them realized that beyond the stars they admired lay a far greater reality, one far older than anything they could ever comprehend.
Hidden beyond the reach of ordinary eyes existed beings whose very presence defied the laws that governed life itself. Some could breathe worlds into existence as effortlessly as a person might draw breath. Others reduced entire galaxies to dust without lifting a hand.
They were worshipped as gods, feared as monsters, or dismissed as myths born from frightened minds. Yet they were neither good nor evil by nature. They simply existed, each following desires and beliefs that mortal hearts could never hope to understand.
Where unimaginable power exists, conflict is inevitable.
The first great catastrophe arrived without warning. A flourishing kingdom vanished beneath an emerald tide as forests awakened with impossible hunger, swallowing cities whole until nothing remained but silence. Centuries later, an ocean climbed into the heavens, drowning the sky itself in an endless sea. Somewhere else, a brilliant civilization celebrated the dawn of a new era, only to disappear before sunrise, leaving behind abandoned streets where echoes lingered longer than the people who once walked them. Entire worlds fell, dimensions fractured, and realities collided, each disaster more impossible than the last.
To those fortunate enough to survive, these events became little more than legends. They were whispered around campfires, preserved in ancient texts, and passed from one generation to the next as cautionary tales. Children were warned never to wander too far into forgotten forests, never to answer voices calling from empty halls, and never to seek answers hidden beyond the stars. Most laughed those stories away as superstition.
They were wrong.
History has always remembered the disasters.
It rarely remembers the people forced to stand against them.
For every world consumed by darkness, there were those who fought until their final breath. For every miracle that spared countless lives, another sacrifice was buried beneath history, its name forgotten while the victory endured. Such is the nature of time—it remembers outcomes far more easily than the souls who made them possible.
While the universe continued its endless cycle of creation and destruction, another story quietly began. Not with the birth of a god, nor with the fall of an empire, but with the life of a single child.
A child who would one day witness horrors beyond imagination, walk paths stained by grief and impossible choices, and discover that even the brightest hope casts the darkest shadow. Whether that child would become the salvation of countless worlds or the beginning of their ruin was a question even fate refused to answer.
After all, every legend begins the same way.
With someone taking their first step into the unknown.