Chapter 1: The Divine Apex and the Seed of Corruption
Before the Great Forgetting veiled mortal minds, before humanity dared to believe it had ever been sovereign, there were gods.
And among them, at the radiant dawn of creation, stood Aethel the Eternal.
Her beauty was not the brazen allure of seduction but the cold, untouchable splendor of a dying star. Hair like spilled starlight framed eyes that had witnessed the birth of realms. She was serenity incarnate, power perfected, and for a time, she knew joy.
Not from worship.
Not from dominion.
But from him.
The quiet completeness of their intimacy had once filled the hollows of her soul.
Gustin, god of ambition and foresight, had been her equal. Her companion. Her solace. Where Aethel embodied the eternal now, radiant and unchanging, Gustin was the promise of tomorrow. He built worlds with a sculptor's patience, his laughter like sunlight dancing across newborn oceans.
And then he drifted.
Not in body but in spirit. His gaze turned ever outward, hands shaping futures she could not follow. The more he crafted, the less he saw her.
At first she mourned.
Then she raged.
And then she learned.
A compliment from a lesser god. A lingering touch. The way their breath hitched when she smiled. It was not love she craved but proof. Proof that she still mattered. That she was not merely a relic in Gustin's grand design.
What began as defiance curdled into obsession.
She took lovers like a blade takes flesh, not for pleasure but to scar. To mark. She reduced proud deities to trembling devotees, their reverence a balm for the hollowness Gustin had carved into her. Each conquest was a scream hurled into the void.
See me. See what you've lost.
But Gustin did not look back.
And so she made the pantheon look instead.
She shattered vows in open court. Seduced consorts before their spouses' eyes. Let the heavens tremble at her laughter. Let Gustin choke on his silence.
One night, a young god of twilight named Calen whispered before she cast him aside,
"I would've loved you."
She paused just for a breath. Just long enough to wonder what she'd become.
Then crushed the thought like glass underfoot.
When the Great Council convened to shackle mortal minds, Aethel scoffed.
"Wipe their memories? Of what? Fear? They're insects."
To her, mortals were mere toys. Fragile, fleeting, and utterly replaceable.
But the gods had grown weary of her games.
And when Gustin stood to speak against her, his voice was not filled with fire but frost.
He recited her sins not with hatred. Not with pain.
But with indifference, as though she were a ledger to be balanced.
That was the deepest cut of all.
The verdict: Banishment.
Exile to the Void, where her voice would fade and her essence wither.
When the celestial chains coiled around her, she did not plead.
She laughed.
A sound like breaking glass, like the final gasp of a dying star.
*"You think this will be my end?" Her voice cracked the foundations of the divine court. "I will return. And when I do, I will not be your equal."
"I will be your god."
And with a thunderclap of light and agony, she vanished.
Dragged into the abyss.
And in that silence, where divinity withers and time forgets, something worse than a goddess stirred.
A hunger.
Not for revenge.
Not for love.
For worship.
Pure, desperate, devouring worship. The kind that stitches dead things back into being, one groveling soul at a time.
The gods had tried to erase her.
But they had only carved a throne in the dark.
And Aethel the Eternal was waiting to claim it.