The Era of Creation

The Book of Origins

Chapter I — The Ohros

1. In the age before age, before the first stone was laid and before the first breath was drawn, there were the Ohros.
2. _ each was the living truth of a thing that must be:
3. The first was was thought— who was the yearning before the design, the dream before the first word. Some say this was the greatest of them.
4. The second was Cosmos, who was the shape of all things, and without whom nothing could have form.
5. The third was Time, who was the unfolding of all things, and without whom nothing could become.
6. The fourth was Life, who was the spark within all things, and without whom nothing could stir.
7. The fifth was Death, who was the return of all things, and without whom nothing could be renewed.
8. The sixth was the Ethereal, who was the unseen beneath all things, and without whom nothing could be felt.
9. The seventh was the Material, who was the known of all things, and without whom nothing could be touched.
10. And it was so.

Chapter II — The Shaping of the Realms

1. And the Ohros spoke together, and from their harmony came three realms, and they called them the Prime.
2. The first was Azturium, the place of first sparks, where the laws of all things were written in light.
3. The second was Asyndra, the place of form and mortal breath, where the laws would be lived and broken and lived again.
4. The third was Bhiahra, where dreams went to become, or to vanish, as they were worthy.
5. Above, the Ohros raised the Celestial Stratum, where the high and the holy would dwell.
6. Below, they shaped the Infernal Domains, where the cast-out and the burning would be kept.
7. And between all things they placed Tetorlaious — the silent void, the buffer of the deep — that the realms would not devour one another.
8. And the Ohros looked upon what they had made, and it was good, and it was ordered, and it was still.

Chapter III — The First Servants

1. Then the Ohros said: let there be those who tend to this.
2. And from mercy and from starlight, they shaped the Lum'eil, and the Lum'eil were radiant and obedient.
3. And from fury and from fire, they shaped the Ur'zhaan, and the Ur'zhaan were fierce and tireless.
4. And both the Lum'eil and the Ur'zhaan were given the work of building, and the work of beautifying, and the work of keeping.
5. But the Ohros looked upon their servants and knew that something was absent.
6. For they could not love. They could not create. They obeyed, but they did not choose.
7. And so the Ohros gave to them the gift that could not be taken back: free will.
8. And from that hour, the Lum'eil and the Ur'zhaan did more than serve. They dreamed. They rebelled. They sang, and they warred.
9. And the heavens were divided — not from hatred, but from the weight of possibility.
10. Some among the elders say the Ur'zhaan reached up and tried to rewrite the stars.
11. Some among the elders say the Lum'eil reached down and tried to imprison choice itself.
12. And neither prevailed, and neither relented, and the conflict had no end.

Chapter IV — The Making of Mortals

1. And the Ohros deliberated, and their counsel was long, and when they rose they said: let there be a third kind.
2. And they took of the dust of Asyndra, and of the turning of Time, and of the contradiction that lies at the heart of all living things — and they made mortals.
3. And mortals were not radiant as the Lum'eil, nor fierce as the Ur'zhaan.
4. They were flawed. They were free. They were curious. They were dangerous.
5. They were capable of building meaning, or of burning it.
6. And the Ohros placed them in Sagun — called Solehaquin by some who came after — the third plane of the Celestial Stratum, neither highest nor lowest among the made things.
7. Balanced. Watching. Becoming.
8. And whether this was mercy or trial, the Ohros did not say.
9. And it was so.