Building something from nothing requires a plan.
Or, at the very least, a good aesthetic.
Rhys stood on the edge of his ten-meter stone disc, Liora hovering silently a respectful distance behind him. The vast, shadowless blue was starting to get on his nerves. It was a blank page, and his fingers were itching to write on it.
"Floating castles are always a classic," he mused, mostly to himself. "But they feel a bit cliché. What about a floating island? Yeah, more foundational. A proper landmass you can build on later. Good for expansion."
He turned to his new, self-appointed follower. "Liora, what do you think? Classic fantasy floating island with waterfalls and a big wizard tower? Or something more alien? Bio-luminescent flora, weird geometry?"
His tone was that of a hobbyist asking a friend for input on a model train set.
Liora, whose entire conception of reality had been rewritten in the last five minutes, simply stared. Her new, cosmic wings gave a soft, involuntary flutter, shedding a few motes of starlight that dissolved in the air.
His words, which sounded like casual brainstorming, were, to her, a god contemplating the shape of a new world. 'Wizard tower'? 'Alien geometry'? These were the sacred concepts he would choose from to defy the void.
She bowed her head. "Whatever The Progenitor deigns to create will be a paradise."
Rhys sighed. "Progenitor? Can you just call me Rhys? And you don't have to be so formal. I'm just spitballing here."
Her silence was his only answer.
Okay, she's sticking to the script. Got it. Dedicated NPC. Respectable. He decided to just go with his gut. Classic high fantasy was always a safe bet for a first build.
"Alright then," he announced to the void. "Let's start with the foundation."
He didn't concentrate in a traditional sense. He didn't screw his face up with effort. He just… reached. Not with his hands, but with his intent. He imagined reaching down, through the floor of this reality, into a place of concepts. He was looking for "earth" and "stone" and "mountain."
There, his mind supplied. A good, solid one. Basalt core, granite peak. Lots of iron deposits for color. A few thousand years of geological history should give it some nice texture.
For Liora, the shift was absolute and terrifying.
One moment, The Pro—Rhys—was standing before her. The next, the air itself seemed to scream.
KKKRRRRRR-AAAAAACCKKK!
The sound wasn't in her ears; it was in her soul. It was the sound of reality being torn open like cheap fabric.
Beneath his floating stone disc, the perfect blue of the Erased Sky fractured. A web of black cracks spread out, not revealing anything behind them, but showing a deeper, more profound nothing.
Then, from that tear in existence, something rose.
It wasn't slow. It erupted. With a gut-wrenching, soul-shaking WHOOOOOOM, the peak of a colossal mountain tore through the rift. It came trailing continents of soil and stone, its ragged roots of rock glowing with the impossible friction of its creation. It was a dark, jagged behemoth, a scar of defiant matter in the face of oblivion.
Water that had no source gushed from its sides in torrential outpourings, a memory of rain and rivers born alongside the mountain itself. The roar of its arrival echoed in a space that should have been silent.
Liora's star-wrought wings flared defensively, and she shielded her face from the sheer force of its becoming. He wasn't building a floating island. He had stolen a mountain from the heart of a world that might not even exist anymore, and dragged it here.
Rhys frowned, tilting his head. "Hmm. A bit rough around the edges."
The raw mountain hanging in the void was dramatic, sure, but it looked like a chunk error in a video game world. It needed landscaping.
He lifted a hand, palm open, and began to sculpt.
"Needs to be more stable," he muttered, closing his fist.
The ragged, broken roots of the mountain compacted inwards. Rock groaned and buckled, reforming itself into a smooth, flattened base. The entire landmass, several kilometers across, settled with a soft hum.
"Needs water features. Good ambiance."
He pointed a finger. At the peak, a spring of crystal-clear water bubbled up from bare stone. It flowed downwards, splitting into a network of rivers that carved paths through the fresh soil, gathering in a deep blue lake at the mountain's center before cascading over the island's edge in a dozen shimmering, gravity-defying waterfalls that simply vanished into mist below.
Ksshhhhhhhhhh...
The gentle sound of flowing water and falling mist filled the air, a peaceful symphony that defied the silent void.
"And of course," he flicked his wrist. "Flora."
Green life exploded across the landscape. Lush meadows of impossibly soft grass carpeted the plains. Towering, ancient oaks with silver leaves and deep forests of colossal redwoods sprouted from the earth in a time-lapse of a thousand years condensed into five seconds. Wildflowers in hues of sapphire and gold bloomed along the riverbanks.
It wasn't just life. It was a perfected, idealized version of it. The air filled with the scent of damp earth, fresh ozone from the waterfalls, and the sweet perfume of pollen.
Rhys nodded, satisfied. "Much better. Now for the main attraction."
Liora lowered her hands, her eyes wide with a mixture of terror and tearful reverence.
It was a world. A paradise, born from a whim. She stood on the edge of the first patch of grass, feeling its impossible softness beneath her worn sandals. This ground was not a memory of what was lost to The Bleed; it was a new promise. A statement.
Hope, a concept she had long since forgotten, bloomed in her chest, more vibrant than the flowers around her.
Then, she looked towards the peak.
The Progenitor stood there, his back to her, arms slightly outstretched.
And he was building his throne.
A single, impossibly pure note began to ring out, a celestial CHIIIIIME that vibrated through the very stone of the new world. A pillar of blinding silver light erupted from the mountain's crest, shooting straight up into the endless blue.
It wasn't fire. It was potential. Pure, unformed creation.
Rhys, of course, was just thinking about the architecture.
Needs to be elegant, he thought. Gothic arches, but with a more crystalline, ethereal feel. Let's use Argent, a kind of conceptual silver-crystal I designed once. Self-illuminating, unbreakable, resonates with magical energy… which probably isn't a thing here, but it's good flavor.
From the outside, the pillar of light began to solidify. It wasn't being built block by block. It was crystallizing. Intricate spires, as sharp as needles and as tall as towers, grew from the main structure. Delicate, flying buttresses of shimmering energy arched through the air, connecting floating chapels and observatories. Walls of translucent, glowing crystal faceted into existence, refracting the sourceless light of the sky into a billion rainbows.
The grand tower at its heart climbed higher and higher, a monument of silver light and impossible grace. It was a fortress made not of matter, but of solidified beauty. A castle of dreams made real.
The final, high-pitched CHIME rang out and faded into the gentle sound of the waterfalls.
And it was done. A perfect, silent, crystalline palace stood on the peak of the living island, humming with a quiet power that pushed back the oppressive emptiness of the void.
Rhys let out a long, happy sigh, like a painter stepping back from a finished canvas. He turned, a cheerful grin on his face.
"So? What do you think? Not bad for a starter base, huh? I was thinking of calling it something simple, like the Crystal Spire or…"
Liora was on one knee.
Her head was bowed, her silver hair spilling onto the perfect, newborn grass. Her starlight wings were folded in a gesture of absolute fealty. She looked at the shining fortress, her voice filled with an awe so profound it was almost painful.
"It is the Argent Sanctum," she whispered, the name falling from her lips as if it were a divine truth she had just discovered, not something she had just invented. "Our bastion. The heart of what is to come."
Rhys blinked. "The Argent Sanctum? Hey, that's way better than what I had. It's got a nice ring to it."
He didn't realize that for her, and for all who would come to see this place, that was now its one and only, undeniable, holy name. He had laid the foundation, and she had laid the first stone of the religion that would be built upon it.