They say Theia was never meant to stand alone.It was destined to merge with Earth, two worlds becoming one. From that union, mortals would have inherited what their kind was never meant to touch — magic, cosmic knowledge, and treasures born of the stars.
But something interfered.
The espers, watchers of fate, saw threads they should not have touched. Their meddling pulled Theia from its path. Instead of joining with Earth, the world was scarred by anomalies, torn, and cast into another dimension. Earth thrived with life. Theia… was left broken, drifting, its balance unraveling.
Long before that moment, at the dawn of existence, twelve fragments had already been born — shards of creation itself. They were not forged by gods nor mortals, but by the universe's first breath. Each embodied a law no one could deny: Life, Death, Time, Space, Storms, Chaos, Order, Void, Light, Darkness, Creation, Destruction.
Most lay scattered across unreachable realms, far beyond the grasp of mortals. But by chance — or perhaps destiny — one of them, the Genesis Codex, drifted into Theia's wounded skies. From that moment, Theia was no longer just a broken world. It became a crucible.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The battlefield was quiet.Too quiet.
Not the silence of peace, but the silence that follows slaughter. Smoke clung to the hills, the stench of iron and ash heavy in the air.
Solen Draven walked among the corpses. Some were men. Most were beasts.
They lay where they had fallen, their flesh stiff, their eyes still wide. Chains clinked softly where creatures remained tethered to wooden stakes, their slave tattoos glowing faintly, binding them even in death.
Draven stopped beside one — a boar Servitor, ribs sharp against its hide, froth dried at its mouth. The tattoo on its chest pulsed weakly, its glow barely there. Even abandoned, even dying, the chain held.
The beast wheezed once, then fell still. The glow faded.
Draven crouched, touching the cold chain. Heavy iron, carved with runes, and reinforced with that cursed ink. A mark that cared nothing for life, only obedience.
"They didn't even release you," he muttered, voice low, bitter.
Further ahead, the field was littered with more of them. Dozens. Wildlings, Servitors, even noble-born creatures broken to heel. All starving. All abandoned. A few still alive, barely.
Draven's throat tightened as he walked. Every sound carried: the creak of leather under his boots, the crackle of fires dying out, the distant caw of crows.
One creature stirred. A tortoise Wildling, its shell cracked, blood seeping into the dirt. It dragged itself feebly, the chain around its leg rattling. Its head lifted, eyes locking on Draven's.
It wasn't the look of a beast. It was pleading.
Draven knelt quickly, pulling bread from his satchel — the last of his rations. He broke it and pressed it to the tortoise's mouth. Slowly, painfully, it chewed.
"Easy," Draven whispered. "Just eat. You'll be alright."
The tattoo on its chest flickered faintly. Even at death's door, the chain still burned.
The tortoise shuddered once more. Its eyes dimmed. The bread slipped from its mouth.
Draven sat frozen, his hand resting on its shell. Around him, the battlefield stretched endless — a graveyard of tools that had once lived, once breathed, now discarded.
His jaw clenched. His voice came rough, shaking, but heavy with weight."This isn't order. This is cruelty."
The wind shifted. Chains rattled against wooden stakes as if mocking him.
He closed the tortoise's eyes with his palm and rose. The battlefield had shown him what he already feared: this world's order was a lie.
That night, under the faint glow of stars, Solen Draven made his vow.
"I'll find another way," he whispered. "Even if I have to burn every chain in this world."
And deep within Theia's ruins, unseen by mortal eyes, the Genesis Codex stirred.A fragment of eternity… awakening.