From the Hadean to the Archean, from the Archean to the Proterozoic — Mateo has endured. For eons upon eons, he has sharpened himself against the merciless grindstone of time, a lone figure standing against the slow churn of creation.
He has walked through endless firestorms, waded across oceans of molten stone, and watched mountains rise and crumble to dust. He has seen the planet itself shaped and reshaped by cataclysmic forces, yet never has he faltered. Each era that passed did not wear him down — it honed him.
Through fire and stone, through aeons of darkness and tempests of unimaginable fury, he has forged a strength beyond mortal comprehension. His mind has stretched across the ages, absorbing every lesson the earth had to offer. What he carries now is no longer merely human — it is something greater, something that exists beyond the bounds of ordinary flesh and bone.
And now, at last, the air grows thick with oxygen. The once-poisoned world has become a cradle, ready to breathe life anew. From the first stirrings of strange, soft-bodied creatures to the slow rise of sprawling forests, Mateo has watched it all, patient and calculating. There is no being, no force that rival his power.
It is the Phanerozoic Eon. Humanity has arrived.
Mateo stands at the edge of a new epoch, his silhouette framed by the dawn of civilisation. The next step of his plan — a plan that has been billions of years in the making — is about to commence.