Before time, before stars, before memory—there was motion.
Not light. Not sound. Just a ripple.
Subtle. Patient. Like the breath drawn before a scream.
In that endless void, twenty shapes began to stir—fragments of thought given form, dreams on the cusp of awakening. For countless eternities, they had drifted in silence, waiting. Not dead, not alive. Becoming.
And then, they were.
The first to open his eyes was Vireon, the First. His gaze was deep and still, like a lake that had never known wind. He did not speak. He didn't need to. The others felt it—his calm authority, his unshakable presence. Where he stood, order gathered.
Beside him emerged Aelor, the Second, laughter dancing in his amber eyes before sound had even formed. He moved like wind skipping across the surface of chaos, teasing the edges of the silence with a smirk that hadn't yet learned regret.
Then came Seren, the Third. Her presence flowed like warmth from a dying fire. She said nothing, but her touch calmed the tremors still lingering in the void. Peace walked with her. Memory formed around her.
And then... the Fourth.
He didn't announce himself. He barely moved.
Where the others bloomed into awareness like divine stars, he simply existed—quiet, withdrawn, eyes lowered. His presence didn't flare. It lingered. A question the void hadn't answered.
Caelum.
The others watched him, uncertain.
There was no spectacle in his emergence. No light. No thunder. Just a shadow among gods. Yet even then, something in the way he watched the others—measured, distant, unreadable—marked him.
He wasn't like them. And they knew it.
The remaining sixteen followed—beings of flame, blood, stone, time. Each unique. Each powerful. Each divine.
Abilities began to take shape. Some could touch time, make it kneel. Others spoke, and new laws of nature formed around their words. A few could fracture matter with a glance, or breathe life into dust.
Divinity blossomed like fire from dry grass.
Except in Caelum.
No power surged from him. No grand display announced his place. But there was a weight behind his silence. A density. As if the void itself was listening to him.
In the heart of that eternal stillness, they stood—twenty gods, newborn and ancient, staring at each other for the first time.
A fragile balance. Untested. Unscarred.
"So," Aelor finally broke the silence, his voice light, careless. "What now?"
No one answered.
Because none of them knew.
Not yet.
But somewhere deep inside Caelum, something stirred. Not power. Not glory.
A name. A feeling.
A quiet voice whispering through the fog of creation.
Find who you are.
He didn't know then that this question would drive him across stars, through betrayal, through love, through war.
But it had begun.