Thousands of years after the battle in Heaven, and far from the Garden of Eden, there was another war.
Not a war between angels and demons, but a war inside God Himself.
You see, the first war—Heaven's revolution—left even the Creator reeling. Not outwardly, not in a way the angels could witness, but it split something within Him.
While Eden was being wrought, a greater, more terrible conflict seethed within the god. This wasn't war with Lucifer. It was a war of the heart and soul, and it was a war so large, so quiet and so consuming that it threatened to tip the balance of good and evil right over the edge.
There were 24 divine beings that God held within Himself— pure reflections of His limitless existence. But in the course of that inner struggle, something broke. Two of those holy corpuscles… perhaps fell.
And the corruption, like poison in water, spread — and it happened very fast, and it went wild, and it was completely uncontrollable.
His 12 originally pure entities became dark. God came down to Earth in secret away from the sight of angels and archangels and the other gods. Not to punish… but to contain.
On one desperate, dying day, He created the last place of all that was forsaken—a forest draped in forgotten magics and quiet. There he locked away the foul twelve… and two others on the brink.
Fourteen shattered shards of deity—each still humming with a glimmer of the divine, but by now bent—lashed to a forest never meant for human eyes.
And with their incarceration, the corruption went away. The final ten divine forces – the final orlah – were the light of God that had not been used.
To watch over the secret of the forest God put eternal watchmen on the borders—the chancellors other centuries—stronger than the fury of seraphim. Not to save the world from the forest …
But in protection against what he had become.
And the forest was closed. The world forgot. The heavens never knew.
It is only our village, which stirs by its darkened rim, that recalls. We murmur the story in firelight, not to woo fate—
—but also remind ourselves of why we never walk past that last tree.
Well, even God was afraid of what sleeps in that forest.
And if God was afraid of it… why shouldn't we be?