The first humans to see them thought they were gods.
The second thought they were ghosts.
By the time word began to spread, there were no words left that made sense.
It began with shadows in the sand.
A caravan moved slowly across what would one day be called the Sahara. The heat was brutal. Their water was nearly gone. Two camels had already fallen behind and been left to the desert. The sun bled into the sand and shimmered like smoke on a fire.
And then the sky cracked.
Just a little.
Not enough for lightning. Not enough for sound. But one of the travelers looked up and saw a figure hovering far above, so high they might have been a trick of heat. A shape. A glint. A presence.
The figure fell slowly, arms at her side, hair moving like it had weight even in the still air.
Nira landed just out of sight. She didn't speak. She didn't announce herself. She simply walked to where the earth was driest and struck the ground with her bare hand. It wasn't forceful. It wasn't violent.
But the ground cracked, and a trickle of clean water began to spill out.
Enough for one day. Maybe two.
By the time the travelers reached the spot, she was gone.
They didn't speak of it at first. The water was enough. The miracle could wait.
But later, much later, they carved a symbol into stone to mark the place.
A figure with a single open hand, framed by waves.
Far away, in a deep jungle, a different story began.
They called him "The One Who Walks With Teeth."
Some said he was a man. Others swore he was a spirit made of iron. Hunters who wandered too far into the dense trees often came back with stories—if they came back at all.
The stories didn't agree on much.
But they all agreed on one thing:
The predators were afraid of him.
Fimmel did not care about being seen. He did not hide, but he did not reach out either. He simply existed in the wild.
He watched wolves from trees. He ran alongside lions and left no prints. He once picked up a bear by its throat and threw it into a river, not out of anger, but because it wouldn't stop roaring while he was thinking.
One night, a group of early humans followed the sounds of thunder into the forest. They thought it might be the return of a god. They found a clearing where no trees grew, no birds sang, and no creature dared enter.
Fimmel stood there.
A storm above him.
Unmoving.
Watching.
The humans didn't approach. They left food at the edge of the trees and never returned.
Daniel and Luke built in silence.
Their structure rose in the middle of nowhere, far from any human paths or hunting trails. The stones were carved with hands, not tools. Every line, every angle, placed with exact purpose. Daniel shaped arches with gentle curves that seemed impossible for their time. Luke reinforced each one with subtle weights that made them stronger than steel.
The structure didn't serve a purpose. It didn't protect. It didn't shelter. It existed, like a temple that had never known worship.
One night, a small tribe found it.
They didn't understand it.
But they knelt before it anyway.
They left markings in paint along the outer walls. They began to return each season. Eventually, they built small huts nearby. Then larger homes. Then tools.
Luke and Daniel watched from a hillside.
Daniel smiled. "They're building."
Luke crossed his arms. "They're copying."
Daniel looked over at him. "That's building."
Luke didn't argue.
Further north, where stone hills met open sky, Lyanna sat in a cave with no name. Her hands were stained with charcoal. Her hair was tied back with braided grass.
She had been watching the stars for weeks.
Not because she had to.
But because they calmed her.
Back home, they had always been at war. Even when they weren't fighting, the idea of war hung in the air like fog. But here, in this place, she could finally look up and feel something other than tension.
She drew constellations onto the walls.
The cave was small, just large enough to sleep in. But her maps lined every inch of the stone. Some were replicas. Others were possibilities. Star formations she thought might appear one day. Dreams written in orbit.
She didn't know the humans had found one of her earlier caves.
She didn't know they had built sacred markers around it, or that they prayed there under moonlight, waiting for the stars to move as she had drawn them.
She only knew that the stars felt more honest here.
Like they wanted her to know them.
Alexandra wandered among early humans more than any of the others.
She didn't speak to them. Not directly. But she watched. She listened. She sat near their fires when they were too tired to notice her presence.
A child once looked up in the dark and saw her.
He didn't cry.
He simply said, "Thank you for watching us."
She didn't answer. But when she left that night, she placed a stone near their tent. It was smooth, flat, and engraved with a spiral.
Years later, that child would grow up and carve the same spiral into the side of a cave.
No one knew what it meant. But they knew it was sacred.
From high above, Nolan watched the Earth shift.
He didn't move much those first years. He floated more than he walked. Observed more than he acted. The people below were small, fragile, loud. But they had fire in them. Real fire. He had seen it once in a young warrior who refused to run from a stampede. The boy stood with a broken spear and shouted at the thunder of hooves like he could stop them with his voice.
Nolan landed in front of him and caught the lead beast by its horns.
The rest fled.
The boy never saw Nolan's face. He had fainted before Nolan let go.
By the time a century passed, the Earth had already begun to shape itself around the echoes of their presence.
Not loudly.
Not clearly.
But in dreams.
In myths.
In scattered symbols carved into rock.
In stories told around fires without names.
They were not known.
But they were felt.
The Legion did not rule this world.
But they had become part of it.