The universe beyond Earth was older, stranger, and darker. Its stars did not glow with the quiet yellow light familiar to mortals, but with fierce hues of green, violet, and crimson, burning hotter and wilder. Space itself looked alive, streaked with rivers of glowing dust, scarred by wounds left from battles between gods no mortal would ever know.
It was into this place that the fabric of existence tore.
The wound was vast, splitting across the night of eternity. From it poured molten light, bending reality around its edges as though space itself screamed. Through that wound stepped two figures, immense and terrible—the Celestials, their colossal bodies filling the void with weight beyond weight.
They did not pause as the wound sealed behind them. Instead, they breathed in the memory of this place, for both had walked this universe before, long ago. This time they returned not as wanderers but as architects of fate.
They moved.
Folding, stretching, bending across the void faster than even light could comprehend, until at last they slowed. Before them hung a galaxy, its arms spiraling in quiet glory. They gazed deeper still, until their eyes fell upon a single solar system orbiting a faint dwarf star. To mortals, the star would have been massive beyond imagining, but to them it was little more than a glowing ember in the dark.
Around it spun eleven great worlds.
Some wore rings glittering like jeweled scars. Others were swollen with endless storms. Each was greater than the small planets of Earth's sun. But at the center, in the narrow band where life could breathe, turned the world they sought.
It was twice the size of Earth. Its oceans swallowed horizons, its continents spread vast and varied, its skies crowned by not one but two moons—one large, pale as bone, the other smaller and red as rust.
From that world rose smoke. From its battlefields rose screams. Cities churned with invention and corruption, while sorcery burned like wildfire through veins of stone and flesh. Its name, spoken in a thousand tongues of its people, was Zerathune.
The Celestials descended.
They shrank as they approached the larger of the two moons, condensing their impossible bodies into forms still immense but more deliberate—shapes mortals might mistake for gods in armor of stars. Seated upon the pale lunar plain, they gazed down at Zerathune.
It was the Celestial of Logic who broke the silence first. His voice was not loud, yet it carried with the inevitability of iron grinding against stone.
"This is the world," he declared. "The perfect crucible. A place where invention is forged by necessity, where war spares no one. Our wager will thrive here."
The Celestial of Madness tilted his head, galaxies shifting in his eyes like restless storms. His voice, softer yet no less terrible, followed.
"Yes… Zerathune. A stage vast enough to drown them in blood, and yet subtle enough to test their souls. Here, imagination and logic will both be sharpened by death. Here, your thinker and my dreamer may rise—or break."
They sat in silence for a span, their gazes falling upon the world below. From this distance, even its wars looked like quiet storms crawling across continents. But they felt everything—every scream, every dying breath, every invention born in soot and desperation.
The Celestial of Logic spoke again.
"Now remains the task of vessels. Bodies suitable for their souls. They must awaken in forms that carry no suspicion. Dead, yet unnoticed. Hosts abandoned by life in the last second of their struggle."
His counterpart gave a slow nod, constellations flickering brighter in approval.
"Yes. The challenge lies here. To find the precise corpses. Recently extinguished flames, overlooked by their kin. To grant them but a single chance in ten-thousand to cling to life. Less—perhaps a chance in a hundred-thousand."
The logical one's voice sharpened. "Zero point zero zero one percent. That is the measure agreed."
Madness laughed—a sound like the echo of collapsing stars. "So cruel, so precise. I would not have it any other way."
The two shifted, turning their attention back to Zerathune.
The Celestial of Logic spread his hand, and light traced across his starwoven fingers. "We must sift through the weave of this world. Every alley, every battlefield, every bed where sickness devours the flesh. Somewhere among these deaths lie the vessels we seek."
"And we must move quickly," the Celestial of Madness added, galaxies burning brighter. "For bodies rot, and souls cling. Only those whose deaths pass unnoticed can serve. No rumors, no miracles, no signs to alert the world. They must enter as shadows, as whispers in corpses that should never rise again."
"Then calculation shall guide us," the first said.
"And chaos shall delight us," the second replied.
Together, they raised their hands.
Their forms glowed, brighter than moons, their power spreading invisible across the skies of Zerathune. Like fire, it scattered unseen, threading through the clouds, across mountains and oceans, down into the choking alleys of sprawling cities and the corpse-littered mud of warfields.
They searched.
Through plague houses where fever stole the last breath. Through dueling streets where knives cut quick. Through factories where smoke suffocated the weak. Through frontlines where steel and magic clashed in gore.
They sifted the dead, one after another. The cold, the nameless, the forgotten.
Some they passed by—too old, too young, too entangled. Others lingered for a moment under their gaze before being discarded.
Yet they did not stop.
For within this vast world of soot and sorcery, invention and slaughter, the bodies they sought existed. Hosts freshly emptied, unnoticed by all but the stars.
As their invisible fire licked across Zerathune's skies, the wager drew breath for the first time.
And somewhere below, in bloodstained shadows, two corpses awaited the souls about to claim them.
__________________________
Time passed.
The light of their search faded, dissolving into the fabric of Zerathune's skies. The two moons once again lay wrapped in silence, their pale glow brushing across the scarred plains. Upon the greater moon, the Celestials sat unmoving, vast shadows stitched from stars, their forms heavy enough to crush mountains yet perfectly still.
For a long while they said nothing. Only their eyes burned, galaxies spiraling endlessly as they turned once more toward each other.
It was the Celestial of Logic who spoke first.
His voice came low, a tremor that rippled through the dust and stone beneath him.
"I have found a body."
The words rolled through the silence like iron dragged across stone.
"A man of no worth. A blacksmith in the alleys of a useless city. His debts bury him deeper than his forge ever could. His hands are calloused, but his craft is wasted—tools rusting, coin slipping through his grasp. Soon, despair will consume him, and he will end his life with his own hand. His death is certain."
The Celestial's galaxies flickered sharper, reflecting cold certainty.
"He has nothing—no wealth, no allies, no future. His survival chance is one in a hundred thousand, no more. Yet he is surrounded by iron, by fire, by the bones of machines. The forge, the hammer, the anvil—objects that will not pity him, yet objects that my chosen human can bend to his will. For one who carries the mind of invention, this vessel is perfect."
He fell silent. The words did not echo, but the meaning lingered like the weight of a mountain.
The Celestial of Creativity tilted his star-filled head. Constellations shimmered inside him, glowing faintly like embers. His answer came slower, but edged with delight, a quiet madness hiding beneath the calm.
"And I, too, have found mine."
His galaxies spun faster, glowing with strange amusement.
"Far from alleys, far from soot and rust—there lies a prince. Young. Naïve. Born into a throne he cannot hold. His enemies circle him like wolves. Already his assassins move. His death is sealed, a blade in the dark no crown can prevent."
The Celestial's voice deepened, threads of joy woven through it.
"His survival, too, rests upon the same cruel chance: one in a hundred thousand. Yet unlike your blacksmith, this corpse carries taste. Title. Power. Bloodline. A throne ready to be seized or broken. For one such as my candidate—a dreamer, a madman, a delusional king—what vessel could be more fitting? He will twist such power into something unthinkable, if he endures."
Silence followed.
The vast moon stretched quiet beneath them. Stars wheeled in the endless black. For a long moment, the two Celestials said no more.
Their gazes locked, galaxies clashing silently, intertwining in the space between them. Understanding passed without voice. No need for argument, no need for boasting. Each had chosen. Each had placed their piece upon the board.
The wager was sealed.
At last, they turned their eyes downward. Their sight pierced through the pale glow of the moon, through the clouds that cloaked Zerathune's skies, into the world below.
They looked past cities where steam coiled from chimneys and lanterns glimmered in foggy streets. Past castles where banners swayed above stone walls, and past alleys drowned in shadow and smoke. Past forges, taverns, markets, prisons, battlefields—all crawling with life, and death.
Their vision cut deeper still.
Through roofs and stone, through flesh and iron, they fixed their gaze on two places. One, a cramped forge where a man bent over his tools, despair gnawing at his mind. The other, a grand chamber where a boy in silk dreamed of tomorrow, unaware that knives already waited in the dark.
The Celestials did not speak again.
They simply watched, their patience endless, waiting for the fleeting heartbeat—the exact moment when both lives would break, when death would claim them.
And then, when the last breath slipped from those bodies, the true game would begin.