There is a silence that exists before the first note of a song. It is a silence full of potential, waiting for a will to give it shape. That will was Voryx, the One Above All. From the silence, he composed the symphony of creation, and the first musicians were the Dragons of Aethra—living concepts of mountain, forest, tide, and flame.
But every symphony requires a counterpoint. For light, there must be shadow. And from the deepest shadow emerged Zylos, the Endless Maw, who was not shadow, but the hunger for the silence before the song. His desire was not for balance, but for the end of all melody.
Their first war was not fought with claw and sword, but with idea and essence. It was a conflict that scarred the bedrock of reality itself. Voryx, with the Dragons of Aethra at his side, did not destroy Zylos, for to do so would unmake the very concept of ending. Instead, they wove a prison of silenced time and forgotten memory at the edge of existence, and there, the Endless Maw was bound.
Eons passed. The Dragons of Aethra retreated to their primordial forge to dream. Voryx remained, the sole keeper of the song, a solitary sentinel in a cosmos of his own making. He built a fortress of shadow and memory, and in time, he was joined by echoes of his first music: Ignis, the spirit of fire's heart; Caelum, the embodiment of sky and wisdom; and Umbron, the guardian of the deep, silent dark. They became his family.
But the silence of the prison was a fragile thing.
It was shattered by the ambition of a lesser goddess, Syphira, who saw in the primordial conflict a chance to seize power for herself. She orchestrated a mortal king's downfall, poisoned the ears of gods, and hammered at the locks of Zylos's cage until they cracked.
And through that crack, a whisper of the old hunger seeped back into the world.
It is into this gathering storm that a single, determined light shines: Queen Aeloria of the elves, a ruler who sold her own lifespan to a primordial power to protect her people from a threat she could not yet comprehend. She did not know that her sacrifice would not just save her kingdom, but would place her at the very heart of the war for existence itself.
She walked into the shadows, and found a family. She faced gods, and did not flinch. She looked into the abyss, and reminded it what it was to hope.
This is the story of the steward and the sentinel, the queen and the composer, and the song they forged together against the coming silence.