Chapter 0: Origin

  I was born to create, yet I do not recall weaving the path that led you to me, but it is not as if I have never drawn an audience before. After all, I created the universe: everything, everywhere, all that you can see and all that lies beyond your sight.

  But since you are here, you must know of one of my creations – the sorcerers.

  When the curtains inevitably fall on them – those who will bear my Will – I expected more to come and watch. Yet you are here, and that is enough. To understand why they must end, you must first understand how it all begins.

  The moment I came into being, I took a part of myself and pushed it around. At first, I could only compress and expand. Then, I could stretch and dangle. I weaved myself into the threads of cause and effect. I was the witness to change, the measure of growth, and the rhythm of my dance. I was the fleeting essence of now, forever moving yet never still.

  This part of me was something you would come to know as ‘time’.

  From my boundless infinity, Sky and Land unfolded, a canvas awaiting my hand. Flow was my instrument. Solids I shaped with flow and compression, then withdrew, leaving rigid pieces of myself behind – silent, yet trembling faintly with my pulse. Liquids, I allowed to dangle and adapt. Gases, I scattered far and wide. All else was whimsy, falling perfectly into place by accident or by fate.

  I cast what I cherished into the Sky, each a fragment of imagination. But one creation stood apart: flawed, yet blessed by those flaws, refined by time itself. And then something extraordinary: a form that sustained itself, pulsing before it faded.

  I believed I had witnessed my own birth.

  Replication was difficult. Only when I loosened my hold did creations multiply.

  And so Life was born.

  To each living being, I gave a core to keep the flow within them. Flow was life. Stagnation, death. Some were strong, some were misshapen, some failed altogether, but I knew better than to interfere too much.

  From the Land, I looked up, and their cores twinkled in the Sky as Stars.

  Soon, the Sky was filled.

  When a life ended, its star fell. To soften its fall, I created the Sea. Once blank, they returned to me there, as finished stories, and the Tree unfurled its branches to cradle them. Sky. Land. Sea. Tree. For a time, I thought myself complete.

  Until the first man took his first steps. One of the countably infinite that would lead, in the end, to you.

  Your kind learned quickly. Too quickly. You wondered. You hungered. You burned with questions, then with envy, then with hate. From your marrow hatched shadows – monsters not of flesh but of feeling.

  Stolen story; please report.

  And anguish fattened them.

  Obsession, dread, despair – these curled into black orbs, defiant of all rules, birthing voids that devoured the stars themselves. Deadspots, I called them. And the Sky, once radiant, grew tainted. Light after light was swallowed.

  So began the Scourge of the Stars.

  I could not stop it. What Man could not master, I could not control. As I could never be tainted, I could only watch as the Sky blackened with rot.

  But from ruin, a lone light stirred.

  He, who witnessed the ravaged landscapes and death, decided to devote his life to making artefacts that could help future generations. Others who had given just as much were devoured, claimed by curse or darkness. But the youth? He remained himself. He broke a law I had thought unbreakable: that all must return to me.

  And so I found him, an equal, beneath the branches of the Tree. He lingered in the Between, neither wholly alive nor gone, and when he lifted his gaze to mine, there was no fear, only wonder.

  “There is only one past,” he said, “but infinite futures.”

  He wished to guard those futures, to shield the infinite with the small, mortal life he carried. Moved, I vowed to seek those who could share his burden, who might restore my Sky to light.

  I went among you and asked, “What do you desire?”

  To those I deemed worthy, I gave the Golden Core, formed by me and shaped by their true desires. In exchange, I simply requested that they carry out my Will: to restore light to the world. Bestowed with the ability to manifest their Wills, they drove away the darkness that plagued their world.

  Lastly, to the most intelligent, the most powerful, and the most erudite, I bequeathed the youth’s artefacts to them. At the same time, I made an exception by granting the youth’s wish. He breathed life into each of his artefacts and moulded each to suit the paths their meisters chose.

  These sorcerers wielded their powers to great esteem and overcame the greatest tribulations. Before they succumbed to the inevitable, they passed their Wills down to their descendants, who faithfully carried on the torch.

  However, humans being humans, this sacred power soon got into their heads. Their egos inflated as they deemed themselves superior to others who were not blessed. They thought that they had complete control over their destinies, forgetting their origins.

  I was wrong to entrust them with such powers, but I cannot leave your world in darkness.

  The sorcerers’ beginnings, I had written.

  Their ends, I am writing.

  And you shall bear witness.