At the beginning of the cosmos, there was nothing but a stillness too vast to name. And drifting through it were four ancient forces—formless, silent, and eternal. Wind, Water, Fire, and Earth—They were not beings, not even ideas, but simply truths so old that even time could not measure.
They moved for ages without destination until, at last, their paths crossed and held. And with that pause, the quiet broke, and a world gathered.
Stone rose and shouldered into ranges, while water sought hollows, tracing veins through bedrock. Weather learned to speak across the sky, and from the deep, heat bled upward—teaching darkness a color.
It was beautiful—vast, empty, and balanced.
A perfect world.
But perfection, the four discovered, was not sufficient. Balance without growth is nothing but an empty dream. And so they breathed intention into matter: a body shaped by Earth, a heart filled with Water, a mind stirred by Wind, and a soul sparked by Fire.
The giants were born from that union—tall, mighty beings shaped by the world's raw will. They walked the ridgelines in wonder, tasted snowmelt at its source, and mapped storms by the tremor in the air.
Satisfied, the elementals scattered their essence through the land—small spirits, deep potentials, seeds that would sprout when pressed—and lay down to sleep. Forgotten, but never gone.
The making of the world passed to the giants, and the young world welcomed their hands.
The giants revered the world. They were meticulous builders. They learned the grammar of stone and season, raised homes that could argue with the wind, tunneled through ore, and spoke to flame as a craftsman speaks to a stubborn tool.
But curiosity grew along with their skills. Some sought the meaning of their makers, tracing the flow of rivers and the secrets inside the flames. They studied the rocks, the stars, and the clouds. From water, they drew life. From Fire and Earth, they forged civilization. And from Wind, they pursued knowledge.
But knowledge birthed questions.
What lies beyond the clouds?
What comes after flame? After breath? After death?
They sought meaning—not because they lacked it, but because they could.
They forged languages that could hold mathematics and myth in the same breath. They shaped sorceries to fit the turn of their wrists and anchored stone to the moving air. Their cities gathered on islands in the sky until they were no longer in the world so much as above it—their civilization shimmered across the night like a second constellation.
And with truth came evolution: their power swelled, their bodies defied time. The giants left the surface behind and built a new nation in the skies—Pantheon. Below, the fields, forests, and seas became, in their minds, the lower earth.
They believed themselves heirs to the world.
And as a final proof of mastery, they fashioned beings after their own intention. Humans.
They were flawed. Fragile. Short-lived.
But sentient.
Too weak to join them, humanity was left behind to populate the surface. And they, who grew looking up at that radiant kingdom in the clouds, called it Heaven. They built temples and worshiped the beings who roamed the stars.
The giants, pleased by those actions, accepted the gesture and crowned themselves gods. But the world was never only gods and their admirers.
In the wild places, beasts grew—born of instinct and pressure, echoing the same raw energy the creators had scattered across the land. Most lived and died as animals.
But some changed.
Awareness found purchase behind the eyes. Power followed.
Their strength was not a ladder but a horizon. A roar could unmake a gorge. A step could plant a mountain's weight in the air. Even then, they were scattered—nations of one, tribes divided by distances so vast that legends starved crossing them. They posed no actual threat to the divine above.
Until one rose who changed everything. He carried the forest in his breath and the crown of dawn between his antlers. He stood before the heavenly gates and did not bow. When he moved, the sky remembered it had bones. When he spoke, it sounded like the answer to a question no Giant had asked.
A being of sovereign power.
A conqueror who shattered the gates of Heaven.
A beast who challenged the gods—and won.
They called him the Golden Stag.
With him at the lead, the beasts rose and shattered the Pantheon.
Walls that had held for millennia cracked; towers that had been cities became falling stars. The Pantheon shattered. Light burned through the upper earth, and a civilization that ruled the world for generations vanished in blood and fire.
But the beasts were not like the gods; They had no interest in worship, order, or rule.
They left the ruins behind and rose to the skies—not to lead, but to play. Humanity was spared—not by mercy, but by indifference. To them, humans were insects—occasionally useful, sometimes entertaining, but never threatening. Some took them as slaves, some as livestock. But they were mostly left to their devices.
With nothing left, humans could only rebuild once more—this time, not for gods or their glory, but for their own reasons. Cities rose because hands were restless. Markets formed because people traveled.
But without a ceiling above them, the appetites learned to speak in complete sentences. With no gods came no guidance, and with no guidance came no restraint. Greed bloomed faster than cities. Envy sharpened quicker than iron. Wrath burned longer than wood.
Desire unmoored does more than change lives; it shapes reality. Seven presences condensed from the tangle of hunger and memory and the divine residue still braided through the world. They were not gods, beasts, or men but something assembled from what each had left behind. They were called the Seven Deadly Sins, the origin of all desire.
They did not raise armies. They did not need to. A whisper, properly chosen, wages its own war. Cults formed like mirrors held too close to the face. Monsters followed, as reflections often do. The Sins spread like a rot beneath paint, and the lower earth fell into chaos once more.
But it wasn't enough. Corruption has no limit.
They sought the sky.
The Sins rose to challenge the beasts and claim the heavens for themselves. The war that began made the entire world fall into ruin. Islands shook and fell from the skies. Continents tilted and slid under the sea. Clouds wept blood, and the skies cracked. For a time, the world forgot its own name.
At last, sensing the destruction, the elementals woke once more. They rose from a sleep so old that memory bowed in their direction—and found a place they did not recognize. Their power was scattered into a thousand small habits of nature; their forms no longer fit what the world had become. The beasts had slain their heirs. The Sins had colonized the breath between living things. And humanity, who had let it all happen.
The four measured what could be saved and found the answer cruelly simple. They opened a gate to another realm—unseen, untouched by corruption.
A new world where the cycle might begin again.
They gathered what remained worth carrying: spirits that could still grow, seeds that might still learn, shards of Giant legacy that hadn't calcified into arrogance. And without a word, they stepped across.
But they were not alone for long—for hunger is never still. First came the Sins, then the beasts. None carried bodies through; they crossed as essence and intention, as names awaiting a voice.
The world behind closed its mouth and sank into silence. Not peace, exactly, but the kind of silence a story leaves when it ends on one page so it can begin on another.
Beyond the Gate, an unwritten sky waited. And the wind—patient as ever—held its breath.