The sky was not yet sky.
It was a great dome of silence, holding back stars unborn and winds unsung. Beneath it, the bones of Ymir still bled into the roots of the Nine Realms, and the gods—newborn and terrible—shaped creation with voices louder than thunder.
Among them stood Vili, god of Will. His gaze was the forge of choice, his breath the beginning of motion. Beside him: Vé, god of sanctity and voice. And at their center: Odin—older, hungrier, cloaked in sight that had not yet been paid for.
They were brothers not by blood, but by origin. From the death of the first giant, they carved the worlds and named them. They gave fire to the stars and taught the void to dream. They were the Nine's heart.
But creation is not content. It awakens appetite.
Odin was the first to hear the whispers in the Ginnungagap—the empty mouth of what came before. He listened too long. The sacrifice demanded by the void was not himself, but the others.
They called it a tribunal. But it was slaughter masked in ritual.
One by one, the Nine fell. Bragi, keeper of song, silenced. Mimir, mind eternal, bled dry. Forseti, judge of all law, shattered on his own scales. Even Vé, whose voice once blessed mankind's breath, was undone by Odin's silence.
And Vili?He saw it coming.
For Vili was not only will — he was sight bound to fate, the only one to see beyond the sacrifice. He did not resist Odin's blade with strength, but with time.
As the Allfather raised Gungnir to strike him down, Vili whispered one final working—A vow that twisted through time like a serpent biting its own tail.
His name burned away.His face forgotten.But his will—unbroken.
And far beneath the roots of Yggdrasil, in a slumber deeper than death, Vilseidr began to dream.