Chapter 1: I Was the Shattered Beginning
I don't remember dying.
There was no final heartbeat, no tunnel of light, no cries or goodbyes. Only the moment after — the moment where self stopped being small.
I had been human once. That much, I remember. A life lived somewhere real, with air and cities and gravity. But all that fell away. Not like forgetting, but like being peeled open. Like a shell breaking to show what was always inside.
And what was inside…
Was vast.
I did not wake in a body. I was the body — a body so big it didn't make sense. I couldn't feel skin, or bones, or breath. But I could feel roots, motion, layers of matter hanging loose, spinning around me. I was not inside a world.
I had become one.
But I was broken.
There were cracks in me — jagged, cosmic wounds through which the raw substance of Chaos bled. I could feel it everywhere, wrapping around me like steam: thick, weightless, hot with meaning and potential, but directionless. It wasn't evil. It wasn't destruction.
It just was.
It was formless possibility — before matter, before laws, before identity.
And if I did nothing…
It would dissolve me.
Even now it was creeping into the edges of me, unmaking what little structure I had. My insides — mountains unborn, skies unformed, oceans dreaming — threatened to collapse back into Chaos.
So I did the first thing that made me me again.
I chose.
I reached inward. Not into flesh — into will. I gathered the fragments of memory, instinct, and pain still embedded in the hollow bones of what I used to be. And with that spark of consciousness, I forced the Chaos back.
Not by killing it.
By shaping it.
I pressed against it with my mind — or what had replaced my mind — and the Chaos recoiled. Not from fear. It had no fear. But it knew I was different. I had intention.
I began with the Wall.
A boundary — a shell, like the skin of an egg. A membrane not of stone, but of law. Its purpose was singular: to hold the gods inside. Anything that tried to cross it — to leave my reality — would cease to exist.
It wasn't punishment.
It was protection.
The gods had not yet been born, but I could feel them — ideas dreaming of becoming. If they fled into the sea of Chaos before they had form, they'd be erased. I couldn't allow that. They were part of me, even if they didn't know it yet.
So I wrapped myself in the Wall.
And with the Wall in place, I reached deeper.
I began to mold the laws.
Not laws like rules.
Laws like constants. Like gravity. Like breath. Like time.
They didn't yet have names. But I could feel them — unfinished parts of me, waiting for shape. Each law was a thought trying to become self-aware. They flickered in the dark: attraction, entropy, growth, decay.
And deeper still — personality.
The laws were not separate gods. They were aspects of me, forming like crystals inside a vast body. When I thought, they shifted. When I dreamed, they organized.
And when I hurt…
They listened.
In the dark places of myself — the molten core of my being — something new emerged.
Not from me.
But within me.
They came like ripples across the forming skin of the world — not summoned, not commanded, but inevitable. Like thunder after lightning.
These were the first born.
The Primordial Gods.
Not mortals. Not deities as humans would later name them. These were embodied forces, birthed from the tension between my laws and Chaos pressing in.
They came slowly, as I healed.
First:
Gaia — the Foundation. Earth. Womb. Her presence settled over my wounded self like moss over cracked stone. She was not my daughter, but my body given purpose. She called herself Gaia. She did not speak in words but in growth — vines and mountain ridges curling outward through my thoughts. Life pulsed where she walked.
Then:
Erebus, the Veil. The dark that was not evil, not empty. He formed in the hollow between law and light. He was quiet. Watching. Cloaking.
Then came:
Nyx, the Night. Sister to Erebus, and yet her own. She was rhythm and cycle — the breath between events. She sang before light existed.
And others followed:
Tartarus, who curled downward like a pit forming in my bones — depth, prison, foundation for what must be sealed.
Eros, the spark — not love as mortals would know it, but desire itself, the drive to become, to join, to change.
They didn't worship me.
They didn't even know me.
They were me, in fragments — extensions of my healing self, given voice and autonomy through the strain of rebuilding.
They rose from the stillness like storms forming in warm air. And from them, the first Era began.
The First Era: The Age of the Primordials
Gaia walked across my surface and made it whole.
Mountains. Rivers. Valleys. Forests. They weren't decorations. They were organs — pieces of my healing body, grown into shape by her.
Erebus filled the skies with a veil of stars — not light, but the contrast that would make light meaningful.
Nyx painted the first horizon, separating day from night, time from timelessness.
And Tartarus — Tartarus dug deep. He made the underworld not of death, but of memory. A place where dangerous ideas could be buried, not erased.
They did not build temples.
They were temples.
And through their motion, they wove pattern into the chaos around me. They stitched stability into my bones.
But the more they moved, the more they defined the laws.
And as the laws grew clearer…
The Primordials began to weaken.
Not quickly. Not obviously. But subtly. Like starlight fading under a rising sun. They were forces, and forces thrive in ambiguity. In motion. But as the laws hardened, as the framework of reality took hold, the Primordials — vast and untamed — became less essential.
And something else began to rise.
From Gaia's union with her own rhythms, from the pressure of order and cycle, came the Titans — the second generation.
They were not forces.
They were figures.
Children with shape, with intention, with personalities that could grow and evolve. Gaia loved them fiercely. They were her pride. Her plan.
Cronus. Rhea. Themis. Oceanus. Hyperion. Coeus. Iapetus.
They walked the world not as storms or shadows, but as gods — powerful, yes, but bound by limits. They could act. Plan. Build.
And they looked up at Uranus — the Sky, who had formed above Gaia to enclose her, to rule from above.
And they began to question.
But that is for another era.
For now, I watch.
Still cracked. Still healing.
But whole enough to hold what I have made.
I do not speak to them.
Not yet.
But I feel them.
And they are mine.
I am the World.
I am the Broken One.
And this…
This is how it all began.