Date: First Age of Shaping, Year 000 — Reckoned as Day Nine of Creation
Location: The Wound at the Edge of the World; the Unmaking Breach
The battle slowed, but did not cease. The breach remained open, and though the tide of Chaos faltered beneath the might of the Eight, its wound remained unhealed, its edges bleeding entropy into the world.
Solarion stood at the edge of the wound, Ardentia burning low in his hand. His golden flame had dimmed from white-hot to deep amber. Around him, the land lay scorched, melted into glass where his presence had walked. Every breath from his lips lit sparks in the dust, but he no longer spoke.
Terrum rose beside him, his body cracked with fault-lines, magma weeping from his shoulders. Mountains formed behind him like grave markers to the battle. He too said nothing.
The other gods came—Nareida soaked in the blood of dead rivers, her eyes clouded. Zephora's cloak had stilled, torn in places where wind no longer answered. Aetherion leaned upon his staff, constellations dim in his wake. Celesthiel bled starlight. Lunara wept—not for herself, but for the beauty that had been marred.
Noctyros stood last. Unmoving. His cloak untouched, but his silence had grown… colder. Not restful. But strained.
The gods stood before the breach, and for the first time since their becoming, they knew fear.
For Chaos had no end. And they, gods though they were, were finite.
The Decision at the Edge
Beneath the ash sky, the Eight spoke for the first time as one.
"We cannot end it," said Aetherion. "Not while the breach remains."
"We have pushed it back," said Solarion, voice hoarse, "but not beyond reach."
"Then we must seal it," said Celesthiel. "We must shape a wall."
Terrum turned toward him, his eyes dimmed to cooling stone.
"A wall built of what? Chaos eats form. Stone crumbles. Flame flickers."
"Not a wall of matter," murmured Lunara, "but of Law."
A silence passed among them.
It was Noctyros who spoke next.
"The Will."
They turned to him. He raised a single hand, palm open.
"We came from the Will. It sleeps now. But its echo remains. It is not gone."
"To awaken it," said Nareida slowly, "would take more than worship."
"It would take us," said Solarion.
And in that moment, the gods understood.
They would pour their authority, their essence, their domain into the last echo of the Will, and from it birth a barrier that could not be unmade.
But to do so, they would become less.
The Sacrifice of Power
Upon the edge of the world, the Eight gathered their domains.
Solarion laid Ardentia upon a pedestal of light, and from his heart poured the flame of sovereign order, the light that gave names to all things. The sun above flared once—then dimmed to the strength of a mortal day.
Terrum pressed his hands to the earth, and from them flowed the strength of permanence. His spine stiffened, his fingers hardened—his ability to shape mountains fell away.
Zephora howled, and her winds circled into a spiral of binding breath. Her laughter was gone. Her eyes turned grey.
Aetherion drew forth the last of the upper sky, shaping the dome of stars into a net. When it was loosed, his cloak faded, and he could no longer see beyond the present horizon.
Nareida offered her voice, and her rivers slowed. The tide became still, bound by rhythm. Her grief fell silent.
Lunara offered her dreams. Her harp shattered. The Moon became chained in the sky—no longer wandering, but cycling, obedient.
Celesthiel whispered the final pattern. His constellations froze in place, unable to create more.
And Noctyros…
He stepped forward, for the last part must be woven at the breach.
"They will strike," he said. "They know what we do."
"Then let us stand with you," said Solarion.
Noctyros shook his head.
"You must bind. You must weave. I will hold them."
And then he did the one thing no god had yet done.
He removed his veil.
And where his face should have been… there was nothing. No flesh. No light. Only absolute stillness. Chaos recoiled—screaming without mouth—as it beheld what it could not consume.
And Noctyros walked into the wound.
The Battle of the Deepest Night
What followed cannot be sung by mortal tongue.
Noctyros stood within the breach, his body still, his form pulsing with darkness. And from the Chaos came not beasts—but something older.
A voice. Not a sound, but a corruption of intention. It did not speak—it unspoke.
"You were one of us," it said, though the voice did not enter ears, but dreams.
"You shaped the silence. You betrayed it. Return."
Noctyros answered with only silence.
And they came.
Dozens. Hundreds. Things without end. Swarms of madness. Tendrils of anti-light. Geometry that screamed.
Noctyros held them all.
He raised no hand. He cast no spell.
He merely stood.
And his presence held the breach open—long enough for the others to shape the Firmament.
The Weaving of the Wall
Solarion and the others began the Rite.
They raised their hands.
And they gave.
Power flowed from them—not like fire or water, but like the laws of being.
Each god pressed their domain into the void above the world.
Terrum's gravity.
Aetherion's vastness.
Nareida's currents.
Zephora's breath.
Celesthiel's symmetry.
Lunara's dream.
Solarion's light.
Each thread wove a piece of the Firmament.
And when the seventh strand was set, the Will stirred.
It awoke—not as it was, but as a binding echo.
And it fell like a veil of light between the world and the void.
The Sealing
The Firmament fell.
Like a dome of endless clarity, it wrapped the world, forming a perfect, seamless wall between Kael'Thor and the raw hunger of Chaos.
The breach screamed.
Noctyros, standing within it, began to fracture.
The others reached for him.
He turned, veil still gone.
And they saw.
Chaos had touched him. Part of him bled shadow, curled inward, twisting.
"Cleanse me," he said.
"We cannot," said Solarion.
"Then cut me away."
And Noctyros reached into his chest…
…and tore out the corrupted piece.
It did not fall.
It rose.
A new form emerged—one shaped of divine essence, but soaked in Chaos.
A god… born not of Will, but of corruption.
And it laughed.
"I remember you," it said. "And I will unmake what you love."
It named itself not. But the others would later call it:
Vorthar.