In the beginning, mankind measured progress in millennia.
Twenty thousand years passed between the first wick of flame and the humble lightbulb.
Eighty-two years later, humankind touched the heavens.
Fifty-three years more, and they shattered the light barrier.
Two years after, they bent both light and space, crossing the void faster than thought.
Thus began the age of expansion. Worlds were harvested, colonies raised, empires stretched across the dark. Humanity believed nothing was beyond its reach. They reached too far.
In the year 2088 of the Old Calendar, they attempted their grandest feat: to warp an entire planet, to tear it from its path and place it opposite Earth—a garden for the wealthy, a monument to their power. But the gate failed. Its bindings broke. The rift swelled without end, and then it collapsed.
From that collapse was born Theos, the Devourer, the Black Sun of Suns. It was said to be ten thousandfold greater than the black heart that once lay at the center of the cosmos, but its true measure was beyond all reckoning, for its hunger knew no end.
The children of Earth fled to their last bastions—Earth, Mars, Ated, and Miro. There they forged their shields, burning all knowledge and power into barriers that might defy the void itself. Ten years they labored, ten years against the tide. Miro was the last; its shield sealed only four days before Theos claimed it. One by one, the colonies fell. One by one, the stars were extinguished. Until the first cosmos was no more.
Yet within their four shields humanity endured, adrift in a sea without stars. Some said their survival was punishment for their pride. Others whispered it was proof they had been chosen. Still they lived, while all else was lost.
What came after no human saw, but the wise say that had they glimpsed it, they would have wept with terror and awe. For as Theos consumed, the truth was revealed: the multiverse was real. And Theos devoured it.
Plane after plane cracked like glass. Realities folded into the abyss. A few fragments endured, carrying survivors of alien flesh and strange design. Most did not. Still Theos hungered, until at last there were no planes left. Nothing remained but the Devourer itself.
Yet in its belly, creation stirred anew. All that was devoured—the stars, the realms, the memories of countless worlds—was drawn together, forged into form. Out of the void rose a pyramid inverted, its point downward, its crown without end. Each floor became a realm of its own, each realm larger than the one below, each vaster than the measure of countless old universes combined. This was the new cosmos, the Pyramid of Theos.
Twenty thousand years have passed since the last light of the old world was consumed. Three thousand years since humankind abandoned their shielded worlds and braved the endless tiers of the pyramid. Here, where realms stretch beyond the memory of the universe that was, where gods and mortals alike walk the endless steps of Theos, our story begins.