Before Lyre had a name; before the stars learned their courses and the heavens agreed upon their patterns, the world existed as a thing unfinished. It drifted in the cosmos like a thought never spoken. A sphere of stone and ice with no song in it. Its seas lay locked beneath ice, their vastness trapped in silence. Mountains slept beneath heavy frost, unscarred by rivers and untouched by time. No wind crossed its surface. No bird had ever tested the skies. Even the light that touched it seemed to hesitate, uncertain whether it should be allowed to fall upon something so still.

It was in this great quiet that the gods found it. Peaceful, teeming with endless potential. Its beating heart lay dormant, undisturbed… asleep since time began. Ten powers, not yet divided, wandered the cosmos, ancient and restless. They did not arrive as conquerors. They came as curious children who had stumbled upon a mystery too perfect to ignore.

They circled Lyre for time unmeasured.

They debated whether it should be left alone. Flawless, quiet, untouched by need or pain. To wake it would introduce hunger, fear, and loss. A world asleep could not suffer. Yet others argued that a world which could dream should be allowed to wake, that creation itself was a calling, and to deny it would be cruelty disguised as mercy.

They spoke in voices that bent the emptiness, and their debate stirred something deep within Lyre. Still the world remained cold. It did not plead. It did not resist. It only waited, as if the decision had already been made and it was simply enduring the final moment before breath.

In the end, the Ten agreed. They would awaken the world-soul, and each bestowed a gift upon their newly waking world.

Torin set his hands upon the world first. Where his will pressed, weight and strength took root. He anchored the heart of the world to its bones so it would not tear itself apart when motion began. Stone found its weight, and Lyre found its foundation.

Aelor followed, and he did not soothe. He placed within Lyre the pulse of conflict and desire, the friction that keeps a world from sinking into stagnation. He taught that change was inevitable, and that stillness was not safety, only delay.

Faye came with gentler hands. She breathed vitality into sea and soil, coaxing green from gray and warmth from cold. The first thaw was not a melting but an awakening. Ice surrendered, water remembered how to flow, and the earth softened to accept its first roots.

Valkyr etched wisdom into the world, ensuring that no action went without consequence and that creation would not unravel at its birth. She set patterns in all things: seasons, cycles, and the quiet certainty that a seed buried in darkness could rise into the sun.

Cabre laced the air with magic, invisible currents that would shape all things to come. She did not forge sorcery as a weapon, but as an artery, a hidden pulse through which possibility could flow and reality could change.

Zelindra allowed shadow to exist beside light, that secrecy and choice might be born. Not all truths, she taught, should be laid bare. Mystery had its own sanctity. In her wake, night became more than the absence of day. It became a place where decisions could be made unseen.

Tak kindled hunger and joy, feast and laughter, the need to gather. He placed warmth in hearths and gave mortals the urge to share food and stories, and the stubborn belief that the world was better when survived together.

Relosh bound the end into the beginning. He set the boundary of life and death not as cruelty, but as principle. Without an ending, life would stagnate. With an ending, it became a river. Thus his ferrymen were born, to guide each soul to its next passage.

Mor’shana came last, and she did not shape the world with force. She knelt. Where her hands touched, pain learned to soften. She wove mercy into the spaces the others had left sharp, teaching the world how to bend without breaking. She placed the heart within living things, not merely the beat of flesh, but the resolve to see another soul as worthy of care.

She did not erase suffering. She gave it meaning. Grief became a bond rather than a void, and tears became a shared language. Where others shaped bodies and laws, Mor’shana shaped connection. Thus Lyre was given its heart.

Vy’kyl stood apart. He watched all of it, and in watching, wondered. While the others poured their domains into the world, Vy’kyl listened for what Lyre might become once the gods withdrew their hands. He did not touch the stone. He did not bless the waters. He observed, and in that observation a question was born that none of the others dared to ask.

When Lyre stirred into motion, the gods realized the world could not flourish without stewards. Life was beginning, but it was unshaped, unguarded, and vulnerable. A world left to chance might become beautiful, but it might also become empty.

The Dwarves were first. Relosh and Torin shaped them from the bones of mountains: stone given patience and will, carved not as statues but as forms meant to endure. Their spirits were hard and slow to break, their bodies made for toil, and their hearts made for stubborn loyalty. Dwarves were taught kinship before war, memory before ambition, and that what is built to last must be built with reverence.

The Elves followed. Cabre and Faye wove them from living magic, shaped by wind through leaves and moonlight off water. Elves were long-lived not because the gods were generous, but because the world needed listeners who could hear centuries as clearly as a single breath.

Humans were last. Aelor insisted they be short-lived, so urgency would sharpen them. Valkyr demanded adaptability, so they could learn what others could not. Cabre warned against giving them too much magic, and Faye warned against giving them too little mercy. In the end, humans were born fragile, brilliant, and dangerous. They were meant for change and meant to question.

Others followed in time: halflings shaped by Tak’s love of hearth and road, goblins born to build and tinker, and orcs forged in trial and survival.

For a time, the gods walked among their creations and saw that it was good. Then Lyre became more than a world that lived. It became a world that thrived.

So harmonious was the world that scholars later declared Year 0 A.P. not as a beginning, but as a recognition. The first year was not marked by a coronation, a war, or a prophecy. It was marked by the moment Lyre ceased simply surviving and began truly prospering.

In those days, the gods walked openly among mortals. Not as kings, but as teachers, challengers, and judges. They did not demand worship in exchange for protection. They offered guidance as a smith offers a hammer. Faith was a bond, not a weapon.

Cities rose without fear of ruin. Dwarven halls reached deeper into mountains. Elven enclaves grew in living forests shaped into homes without killing a root. Human kingdoms sprang up fast as flames, their markets bright and restless.

Magic flowed freely. Cabre herself walked among those who studied it, and reminded them magic was a current, not a crown.

War existed, but it was ritualized and rarely annihilating. The worst conflicts ended with borders redrawn, not populations erased.

Death was understood. Relosh’s gates were visible to those near passing. Grief did not curdle into terror, because all knew the dead were not lost.

This was the Golden Age, and like all such ages, its end was inevitable.

The fall of the Golden Age did not come with fire or plague. It began with absence.

One by one, the gods withdrew. Mortals learned what it meant to choose without an immortal voice hovering over every decision.

At first, it felt like freedom. Then it began to feel like hunger.

Noble Houses arose as protectors, then hardened into rulers. Duty became inheritance. Inheritance became authority. Authority became crown.

Vy’kyl watched with growing unease. Somewhere beyond the veil, a ferryman named Salin’Roth listened, and the dead learned resentment.

Salin’Roth ascended quietly, whispering of loopholes and bargains where Relosh had kept finality. He spoke of death as a toll road whose keeper could be bribed.

He approached Vy’kyl first, because Vy’kyl had already questioned. Vy’kyl listened, for far too long.

When Vy’kyl moved to drag Salin’Roth before the divine council, the other gods misread it as treachery and struck Vy’kyl down.

Vy’kyl’s blood fell upon Lyre. Where it touched the world, undeath was born. The Ten were no longer the Ten, and Lyre began to tilt toward darkness.

The sun dimmed. Dawn came thin and gray. The undead spread, and cities fell.

Noble bloodlines shattered or hardened into tyrannies. Some became bastions. Others became predators.

Amora awoke, delighted by collapse. Her presence turned war into madness.

The remaining gods acted together. Salin’Roth fled into the veil. Mor’shana was chained in divine iron. Darkness was sealed, not destroyed.

The world survived, and the scars became borders.

The world rebuilt, but it was not the same. Gods no longer walked openly. Faith fractured. Death became a final truth, and resurrection grew rare.

Noble Houses ruled wide lands. Some protected. Some preyed. Ruins became holy sites, and mass graves became pilgrimages.

The undead did not vanish. They lingered, and some remembered too well.

Magic grew unpredictable. Scholars grew cautious. Libraries hid knowledge as one hides a blade.

And now, in the current year, 21 A.R., darkness stirs.

The First Seals weaken, names of old resurface in whispers.

The gods are still silent.

In that silence something has awoken, it remembers the blood that stained it and the chains that bound it.

It will not stay quiet. What stirs in the darkness is not sleeping. It is waiting.

And when it rises, the gods themselves will tremble.The First Seals were promises, and promises fade when no one remembers why they were sworn.