In the long, unmarked ages after the exile from Eden, the earth began to change.
The children of Adam and Eve multiplied, and the lands filled with tribes of men.
They built dwellings of stone and mud, kindled fire, and gave names to the stars that watched from the endless dark.
They spoke in tongues now forgotten, calling the rivers and mountains by names that would one day crumble into dust.
Yet in the hearts of many, the echo of that first defiance lingered.
It moved in their blood — a distant memory of rebellion, a hunger for forbidden knowledge, the quiet, unyielding desire to wield the fires of the divine for themselves.
Though they did not remember the serpent's voice, it spoke still in their dreams.
And in the higher realms, those who had once been cast down still watched.
Lucifer, bound to the lower dominions, had not forsaken his ambition.
His followers, known to mortals in fractured tongues as the Grigori — the Watchers — peered through the thinning veil between realms.
Their hearts, twisted by exile and pride, yearned to claim what had been denied them.
For what use was eternity in shadow, when the world of flesh offered dominion?
And so it came to pass that in the darkness of forgotten nights, when the boundaries of creation bent and the firmaments lay thin as gauze, they descended.
I beheld them as they crossed the boundaries between the higher firmaments and the world of dust.
They no longer bore the pure radiance of their former selves.
They cloaked their forms in guises both terrible and beautiful — neither wholly mortal, nor entirely divine.
And upon the earth, they walked among men.
They took wives from among the daughters of mortals — beings of surpassing beauty, born in the image of the Architect, yet bearing the untamed fire of free will.
The Watchers desired them not only for lust, but for their untapped potential.
And from these unholy unions were born the Nephilim.
Giants. Titans. Demigods.
Beings of immense stature and terrible strength, whose blood mingled the fires of heaven and the clay of earth.
They were gods in the eyes of men.
Their voices shook the mountains.
Their footprints shaped valleys.
Their hunger was insatiable.
I saw them claim dominion over the lands.
They bent nature itself to their will.
They warred against the earth and each other, reshaping rivers, raising mountains, and turning fertile plains to wastelands.
And worse still — they taught mankind secrets not yet meant to be known.
The forging of weapons in fire and blood.
The reading of stars to foretell fate.
The calling of spirits from deep places best left undisturbed.
The crafting of poisons, the binding of shadows, the laws of war and sorcery.
From these dark gifts, the first great civilizations rose.
Atlantis — a city of crystalline towers and shining bridges, seated upon a chain of islands amid endless seas.
There, the Nephilim reigned as kings, wielding powers that shaped storm and stone, building engines of light that fed upon ancient energies no mortal mind could comprehend.
Lemuria — a vast continent of primordial forests and blood-soaked rites, where mortals and Watchers wove strange rituals beneath violet skies.
Its sages and priest-kings sought to open the veils between worlds, to tear down the walls between mortal, angel, and demon alike.
Eridu — the oldest of mortal cities, born before recorded time, its great ziggurats reaching to the heavens, its priests seeking to steal the knowledge of the divine through sacrifice and blood-oaths.
There, the oldest of the old gods whispered in the shadows, and the secrets of the fallen ones were passed from mouth to ear in forbidden tongues.
These cities were the wonders of the ancient earth — legends later buried by flood and fire, remembered only in broken myths, in half-remembered names scrawled upon shattered tablets, in the whispered terrors of ancient priests.
But their greatness came at a terrible cost.
The Nephilim, unbound by mortal frailty, grew cruel.
They fed upon mortal blood.
They demanded tribute and sacrifice.
They declared themselves gods.
The cries of mankind rose to the higher realms.
And the Architect — whose gaze sees beyond all veils of time — beheld the corruption.
Even now, Lucifer's hand moved through these ancient empires.
I felt his will in the rise of tyrant-kings.
I saw his shadow in the secret rites of blood sacrifice, in the forging of weapons meant to pierce even the fabric of creation itself.
It was during this age that the Shards of the Word began to resurface.
Seven fragments of the original Utterance that birthed the cosmos — scattered in the aftermath of the First War, now sought by both angel and demon, by Nephilim, sorcerer, and fallen god.
Each shard bore power beyond reckoning.
Each could alter the weave of fate itself.
And with each, the barriers between worlds weakened.
In Lemuria, priests built gateways of black stone to tear through the veils and summon beings from the beyond.
In Atlantis, the kings gathered three of the Shards, feeding their crystalline engines with stolen power, their cities humming with lights unnatural and terrible.
In Eridu, a single Shard was buried beneath the oldest temple, guarded by mortal bloodlines sworn to a silent, ancient oath — protectors of a fragment of the Word itself.
I watched as these civilizations crested toward their doom.
For power breeds pride.
And pride demands ruin.
The earth could not bear their weight.
The heavens would not permit their defiance to endure.
And so, the seeds of their destruction were sown.
The days of the Nephilim were numbered.
The cities of ancient might would fall, not to armies, but to heaven's decree.
A cleansing storm would be summoned to wash the earth clean of its corruption.
But not before one final act of defiance — a moment that would tear the very veil between worlds and leave scars that would never fully heal.
And as always, I moved within it.
I stirred the threads of fate.
For I am the storm beneath the storm.
The weave must be maintained.
And the War Before Worlds had only just begun.