Darkness.
It stretched beyond time, beyond space. It was not the absence of light, nor the presence of shadow—it was something deeper. A silence so profound that even existence seemed distant.
Then, within the abyss, a single ember flickered.
A breath.
A thought.
And with it, something stirred.
It did not have a name. It did not have a body. It simply was.
A whisper, not from a voice, but from the very fabric of reality itself, coiled around it.
"Directive: Reignite The Forge."
The ember within its being pulsed. Awareness trickled in like water seeping through cracks in stone. It felt the weight of something ancient pressing against its mind—fragments of a past it could not recall.
The silence shattered.
With a jolt, it awoke.
It lay in the center of a ruined chamber, surrounded by walls of obsidian-black metal, scarred and fractured. The air shimmered with echoes of something long extinguished—memories of fire, of creation, of power that once shaped existence itself.
It pushed itself upright, though it had no true form. Its hands—were they hands?—shifted like molten steel, phasing between solid and ethereal. It looked down and saw nothing, yet felt the weight of a body that should not exist.
A presence stirred in the distance.
Something was watching.
A low hum reverberated through the chamber, a soundless voice clawing at its mind.
"You should not be."
A figure emerged from the shadows, wrapped in tattered celestial robes. A being of cracked golden light, its form flickering between godhood and decay. Its eyes—if they could be called eyes—were hollow voids where divinity once burned.
"The Forge was sealed. Its fire extinguished. Its purpose… erased. Yet you stand before me."
It stepped closer, ancient authority weighing down like an invisible storm.
"What are you?"
The question rang through the chamber. It did not have an answer.
The ember within it pulsed again. A flood of something old surged through its veins—memories that were not memories, knowledge that had no source. Its voice, raw and unshaped, formed for the first time.
"I am…"
The chamber trembled. The walls groaned as unseen forces coiled around them.
The figure's gaze darkened. It raised its hand, and reality itself twisted.
"It does not matter. You will be unmade."
The air cracked like shattering glass. The weight of divinity bore down, a force meant to erase, to obliterate, to return all to nothing.
Yet, as it reached for the nameless being—
A spark ignited.
The ember flared, and for the first time in eternity—
The Forge remembered.
And the world itself shuddered.
End of Chapter 1