The valley was not always a place of quiet greenery and peace.
Thousands of years before a blue-skinned child would draw his first breath in the mountains, the land thrummed with power. Rivers of liquid light carved paths through meadows of crystalline grass. Floating stones, veined with raw majik, drifted lazily through skies streaked with auroral colors: permanent twilight painted in shades of violet and gold. This was ancient Terra Primius, the world before the draining, before the long sleep of majik. This valley, lush and vibrant, would one day be known by another name: the Realm of Koronos.
But on this day, it was a slaughterhouse.
The ground was churned to mud, littered with tens of thousands of dead. Golden-armored soldiers of Otepi's celestial host lay twisted among the broken bodies of Nightlands spawn, things of shadow and hunger that should never have touched this world. Golems, carved from living stone, had been shattered like pottery. The fighting had raged for three days, and now, at the center of the carnage, the final confrontation unfolded.
Otepi stood against a tide of nightmares.
She was the mightiest of Everlivings, the first and greatest of their kind, and even wounded, even bleeding from a dozen gashes, she was radiant with power the world has never known or would ever know again. Tall and golden-haired with glowing translucent wings out of her back, she wielded a sword of pure radiance: light given edge, the precursor to the blade that would one day rest in Koronos's hand. Her face showed no fear. Only exhaustion, and the grim resolve of a protector who knows she may not survive, but this is her sacred duty, as it is for all Everliving.
To her left, Supremus fought with desperate fury. Dark-haired and handsome, fierce, his eyes burning with love and terror, he cut down anything that came near. He was not yet metal. He was flesh and blood, his lungs burning, his arms screaming, but he would not stop. Could not stop. The woman he loved was dying behind him, and he could not reach her.
To her right, Solaron the Bodymender knelt in the mud, his hands glowing with soft, golden light. He was their son, the last remaining offspring of Otepi, with golden locks and a gentle face unsuited for war. He was not a warrior. He was a healer, forced into this nightmare, and he tried to save as many warriors as he could but it wasn't enough. His power was useless against what was coming.
The tide parted.
Prince Tormentas did not walk. This is the aberration, an immortal god.
Summoned from the deepest pits of the Nightlands by a cabal of corrupted sorcerers, those who had once served Otepi and now sought her throne, the aberration was not a creature of flesh. It was a wound given form. A giant shrieking skeletal mass of shadow, red glowing eyes, sharp teeth, and an aura of despair that surrounded it. It moved through reality like a blade through water, an upper torso of bone and black mist but no legs. It did not kill. It unmade and drained souls. Every step it took, the grass beneath it withered and died. The air around it screamed.
It had one target.
Supremus saw it coming. He roared, cutting down the last spawn between them, and threw himself toward Otepi but he was too far. Too slow and tired from days of fighting.
Tormentas struck.
It passed through Otepi like smoke through a sieve. There was no impact, no explosion of force. Just a single, terrible moment of stillness, and then she crumpled and her glowing wings faded away.
The sword of radiance fell from her hand, its light guttering out as it hit the bloodsoaked mud.
Supremus reached her before she hit the ground and caught her. He cradled her head in his arms, his hands, still human, still warm, pressing against the wound that was not a wound. There was no blood. No mark. But her light was fading, her bright yellow glowing eyes fading.
"No," he whispered. "No, no, no—"
Solaron was there, his healing light pouring into her, golden and desperate. But the light passed through her like sunlight through smoke. The wound was not of the body. Tormentas had un-made her from within, and there was nothing left to mend.
"Mother," Solaron wept, his voice breaking. "Mother, please."
Otepi's eyes opened. They found Supremus's face, and a faint smile touched her lips. She raised a trembling hand to his cheek.
"My love," she whispered, her voice a thread of sound. "Do not let this break you."
"Don't speak," he begged, tears streaming down his face. "Don't speak, we can… I'll find a way…"
"The worlds," she continued, as if he hadn't spoken, "need you to be more than your grief."
"I cannot live in a world without you, there is no world without you."
"Then live for the world itself." Her eyes found Solaron, weeping beside them. "Protect it. From them." Her gaze returned to Supremus. One last breath. One last smile. "I love you. Both of you. Always."
The light in her eyes went out.
Solaron's hands still glowed, useless and bright. He bowed his head over his mother's body and wept. "I'm sorry," he choked. "I'm so sorry, Mother. I couldn't, I couldn't save you."
For a long moment, Supremus was silent. He held her body, rocking slightly, his face hidden. Solaron reached for him, to offer comfort, to share grief.
And then the screaming began.
It was not the cry of a grieving man. It was the universe tearing in half. A sound that was also a force, blasting outward from Supremus's broken heart, cracking the stones of the valley, shattering the floating crystals in the sky, sending shockwaves across the continent. His love, his reason, his hope: all of it combusted in that single, endless scream.
When it finally stopped, he stood.
He laid Otepi's body gently on the ground. He looked at his son, but did not see him. He looked at the fleeing remnants of the Nightlands spawn, at the distant shape of Tormentas retreating into the shadow of the coming grey dawn. He looked at the sky, at the uncaring gods who had done nothing, hatred grew in his heart, burning hate.
"If the Nightlands feeds on life," he said, his voice flat and terrible, "then I will deny them their feast. I will end all life. Every world. Every soul. Until there is nothing left for them to consume."
Solaron reached for him. "Father."
Supremus turned away.
He abandoned his flesh that night, he abandoned his soul, and forsook the Omniverse.
From the ruins of the battlefield, the melted armor of fallen soldiers, the shattered bones of golems, the twisted metal of weapons, he crafted a new body. A shell. A weapon. A tomb for everything he had been. When he rose again, he was no longer Supremus the lover, the father, the protector. He was Supremus the metal destroyer of worlds, and his heart was a fist of cold iron.
But even he can be killed: Everliving are not immortal. He knew this. Otepi had taught him that.
So he took his soul, his love, his grief, his madness and bound it into a locket of silver and crystal. He hid it in a vault deep within the Spires, on a world of pure majik where no one would think to look. As long as the locket remained intact, he could not die. As long as his soul was hidden, he could not be stopped.
Now he was truly immortal.
The Scourging lasted a century.
Supremus moved through the Omniverse like a plague. Worlds burned in his wake. Civilizations fell to their knees and did not rise again. The Spires, a realm of breathtaking majik and beauty, was where his hammer fell hardest. The planet fractured, shattering into countless fragments that drifted in the void like the remains of a broken mirror. Millions of people died in the shattering, billions of creatures erased.
Terra Primius, the world of Otepi's last stand, was scarred so deeply that its majik drained away like blood from a wound. The rivers of light dried up. The floating crystals fell. The golden age ended as millions more perished, and the long age of men began: a world of flesh and steel, of sword and shield, where magic became myth and then became forgotten.
The gods of the Void watched and wept. And for the first time in eternity, they intervened.
They had never involved themselves in mortal affairs. The Everlivings were their weapons, forged to fight the Nightlands, and what weapons did in war was not their concern. But Supremus was no longer fighting the enemy. He had become one. A cosmic threat that would, if left unchecked, unmake everything they had built.
So they acted.
They gathered the remaining fragments of the Spires, stitching them loosely back together with strands of raw reality. They placed this broken realm in a pocket dimension at the edge of real space, near Sleeping Dragon and Terra Primius, a warning and a prison. And they bound Supremus on the farthest fragment, a place called Hadron.
He could not leave. His power was contained.
But within his cage, he waited. He planned. He built.
And he dreamed of revenge for eons.
A whisper of this ancient tragedy lingers in the world.
In the valley where Otepi fell, the blood-soaked land never healed. Dry, sick grass grew over the bones. Snow covered the scars. Eons passed, and the memory of what happened there faded into myth, then into silence.
But the land remembers.
One day, a blue-skinned child would be born in the Helfire mountains. He would grow up hunting among the peaks, unaware of the power sleeping in his blood, unaware of the destiny written in the soil beneath his feet. He would find a sword, forged from the light of a dying goddess, and it would choose him.
And in a distant prison, a metal god would feel the stirring of something long forgotten. A name. A memory. A threat.
Koronos.
The seeds of destiny were sown in blood and grief. Now, after ten thousand years, they are ready to bloom.
In the valley that would one day bear his name, the seeds of Koronos's destiny were sown in the blood of a dying goddess and the scream of a man who chose to become a monster and the fate of reality will be decided when they collide.