In the beginning there was only the darkness between the stars. It was an infinite darkness, stretching beyond the time before memory. It was during this dark that the Creator came. They stepped through a doorway from their own universe, bringing with them light.
The creator brought with them three objects, a clump of clay, a seed of the tree and the first spark. With the clay they created the first vale, a floating island deep in the center of creation. They planted the seed, and under their care and cultivation it grew into a huge tree, roots and branches twisting through time and space. With the spark the first flame began, burning eternal at the base of the evertree. And this was the first vale, the first land, the Creator theirself’s domain.
But the Creator was lonely. There was silence in this strange universe, no songs or stories to light the life of that eternal being. The creator remembered the flutes of their home, the strange pipes that sounded every time they touched the source from which their power flowed, a vein through the universes, connecting all the other selves and other places.
They created the flute from the heartwood of that mighty tree. Music came to the creation and with tha music a god was born. She was carved from the sungwood, the music of the flute twisted from the tree, her heart made from the song itself. The Creator was no longer alone, and her disciple she called Terah.
Terah and the Creator lived in that place, frozen in time and alone for time out of mind, caring for the tree, keeping the fire burning bright, but this was not enough for the young god. She wanted more. The creator gave her the flute, gave her a chance to do something great with this creation of ours.
The first creatures she created were the Fae, beings formed from the clay of the first vale but without a spark from the fire to light them. The first Fae lived in that vale, working side by side with the creator and terah, but still it wasnt enough. The power Terah had touched when creating them called to her.
Meanwhile the Creator grew distant, hiding away in the branches of the evertree, and every breathing moment regretting their decision to leave the otherworldly pipes and strange magics of their homeland.
Terah’s domain spread outwards, creating a vast landscape riddled with mountains and valleys, rivers and churning oceans, filled not with water but with raw power stemming from the roots of the evertree.
The fae spread out, inhabiting this vast new world, and Terah went with them, taking the flute with her. The creator was alone again, and in their loneliness they dreamed. They dreamed of the future of this new creation, of its inhabbitance and of the darkness its power would draw.
When Terah returned at the prompting of a new power, much stronger but much more subtle, the Creator was gone and in her place five beings. These few were created to control the necessary gears of the universe, Watcherseye for the idea of sight, the Doorkeeper for the forever end that is death, Clarity for the beginnings and endings, Sightless for the ideals of the future, and the Singer for the willingness to remember them.
Terah tore the universe apart, searching for the being that had created her, but they were nowhere to be found. Eventually she fell back to the first vale. Again the urge to create drove her, and the first almost humans came to the universe. They were a strange people, with bones too long and skin darker than the darkest night and hair the color of summer clouds. They became the first vale walkers, and they found their place in the sandy wastes at the base of the evrtree, creating the city of dreams, Autaria.
Terah continued to create, and as her world stretched farther she noticed little bubbles of land, small landscapes that seemed to draw the creator’s power like a magnet. These she called the Vales, places of raw untainted creator’s breath.
Humans began to inhibit the rest of the world, sculpted from the clay of the first vale, with a small spark placed inside their chest. The Centuri, those few that remained from the Creator’s death looked after them, and when the time came, claimed them, sending their bodies to create more expanding land and their sparks back to the eternal flame.
The Mother watched all of this from her high throne in the first vale. She was watching this when the first god since she emerged. Maeve with her strange power, unique from both that of the creator and that of terah.
Time passed and more gods came. Terah came to accept them in their unexpected uniqueness and gave them their domains. Humans grew to worship them, and they took on a new name, Aetyri, with Terah at their head.
All this time Terah held the flute close, never playing it. The vast land before them was strange, and boarders began to start appearing, the humans creating their own kingdoms and colonies. Wars started and when Terah was called upon to interfere, she didn’t know how. At her Aetyri’s prompting she played the flute, like she had all thise millenia ago. The land cracked and broke, forming into planets around the wells of power left behind from the Creator’s rule.
With the help of Clarity she created obolisks in the center of each of the old kingdoms, a means for humans to travel between world’s, connected by the roots of the evertree. There were still wars, but less violent, less destructive. Terah sat back, watching her universe grow and flourish.
Those first people, now called Vale walkers, spread throughout all the vales, creating havens for the power that was, and people to remember the way things were. Things were soft and calm for a very long time. Until Sightless, one of the Centuri ran away and hiding in a vale all her own, twisted by her ever chaging power, had a daughter.
Terah took notice to that, and holding her power close, approached Sightless, now called Cinder. Cinder held something strange as well, a crawling darkness like a rot. Terah confined her to a painting frame and stole her daughter away to the first vale, where she raised her as her own. Her Heir.
After seeing that twisting dark, knowing what it could do to the mind of even one of the Centuri, she decided the universe needed protectors. The angels, seven orders of humans who chose to pick up sword and wings and protect the creation against the dark.
Among these angels came a young man from a distant vale, known as the valley. He had white hair and silver eyes, so similar to the ancients that had died out long ago. He came with a bunring honor and a need to do good. Terah watched him as he rose through the ranks of angels until he killed a corupted Talem, a minor god in revenge for the death of his mentor.
In his anger and pain, the young angel then mascerading as Silvanus became the right hand of the mother, the Aetyri’s fist. The angel with eyes the color of bloody starlight. He wrought a path of pain across the world, wielding the relic of the god he had killed. Terah kept him close, studying his strange power.
It was said that this boy, this Silvanys could access the power of the dreamscape, the domain of dreams, one of the Creator’s last physical creations for the people of their universe. And Terah had seen this power, manifest in the form of obsidian and sunlight.
Terah watches as he grew close with the youngest member of an order as old as the angels, the thirteenth noble, the storyteller. Long ago she had created these nobles to teach their talents to humans, keep them learning and developing. The thirteenth, she was an oddity, just as Silvanus was. A storyteller, an artist in an order of scientists and historians. A noble Terah hadnt brought back, but taken credit for nonetheless.
The universe kept turning, and more darkness seeped in through the cracks. People came and went, gods stopped being born as often as they were before, Silvanus fought, the vales remained still, the Nobles taught and Terah watched it all.
It wasnt long before Silvanus came to her, visions of an eternal dark plaguing his mind, waking and dreaming. They tried to prepare, they tried to fight. Nothing worked.
The darkness came first for the nobles. If it destroyed the knowledge of humanity there would be no way they could remember or return to such a point as they were at now. Of the thirteen, five survived, Ann amoung them.
Next it went for the roots of the Evertree, snaking through the world’s and darkening each one it touched. Terah rose above the others, the Centuri, her gods, Silvanus and the Heir behind her. They fought, they died. Terah turned her gaze to the sky and she knew what she had to do. Placing her flute in the hands of the Watcher she rose up, grappling with that nameless terror. They fell together, dragging down the land of the gods with them.
The heir left, Terah’s hand placing a truth seal on her lips, rendering her silent and unremembering of any name, even her own and placing a strange otherworldly magic inside her. The Centuri fell appart, fell to madness and died all but two. Silvanus fell and in his fall he renched the flute from the Watcher’s hand. He played one last song, severing the worlds from one another.
Silvanus fell into a distant nameless vale, one of the smallest this side of Alta, the home of Dana the last dragon and the dragon princess Caliope. There he awoke, memory gone. They gave him a new name, called him Ember and let stay in that distant Vale as around them a new univers burned.
The gods, once pillars of light and hope, fell into dark beings full of dispare. They relished in the apin of mortals, choosing their world’s to bring fresh torment to, and every world they set foot on, the darkness came. The creator’s breath, that wild natural power was no more as prevelent as it had once been, taken instead by corrupted thought and loss of memory.
Different groups now came to be in what was now called the margins, the secondary smaller world of the ancients, vales and creator’s breath. Very few could move between worlds, Vale walkers choosing to stay in their secluded bubbles of magical time, the Talem who hadnt fallen into dark shadows of their older siblings, hiding in the cracks of the worlds, masquerading as humans or making their homes on humanless worlds.
Few came to inhabited worlds, mostly to port worlds, worlds that connected different sects of planets, each with their own unique magic. There was no natural well of power on these port worlds, so it was easier for the Talem to hide from the Aetyri, their aura mingling with the power seeping in from all the different worlds that surrounded them.