Before structure and before form, there was Will. But Will without Accord is Fracture. And from fracture, something stirs.
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The Weave trembled. Not from motion, for motion had not yet been named — but from conflict that had not yet become war.
Across the tapestry of Concept, where once only harmony flowed in opposing unity, new vibrations emerged. Not rhythm. Not song. Something... off.
Between N'yrrhath's dreaming spirals and Asaryel's crystalline lattice, a rift of pure contradiction shimmered — the Unmeant Fold, a wrinkle in the infinite where unspoken thoughts lingered too long.
None of the Primordials intended it.
None saw it forming.
But it felt them.
And so, it awoke.
It did not emerge with a name. It could not. Names imply intention. It was born of unintentional consequence — a ripple, a murmur, a misfire in the syntax of reality. The first Echo.
Not a being. Not quite. Not yet.
A shadow of resonance. A flicker between thought and unthought.
It drifted between the Camps that had not yet been declared:
Asaryel, radiant with axiomatic purity, labored to harmonize rising dissonance. From her flowed Law, Angle, Structure. But the more she defined, the more unknowns rose to resist her.
N'yrrhath, lost in dreams that bled into all directions, whispered concepts not meant for order. He spoke not in words but in spirals and impressions. He did not war — he unwound.
Eroth, the Divider, traced fault-lines and boundaries, cutting realms with invisible hands. He saw the Echo and named it "Error."
Yunea, ever-burning, danced with glee as possibilities multiplied. To her, the Echo was a flame born of friction — beautiful in its agony.
Thaal, the Silent One, observed but offered no thought. For to give voice is to give shape. And shape was not yet earned.
The Echo drifted among them like oil on water — impossible to bind, and growing.
It began to mock its creators.
It reflected fragments of their own thoughts back at them, but twisted.
Asaryel saw in it a mirror where her laws turned to brittle cages.
N'yrrhath saw dreams echo back into nightmares he did not shape.
Eroth saw it cross lines that should never have been crossed.
Yunea smiled, and then frowned, for the Echo birthed smoke without fire.
Thaal turned away, but the Echo followed — a sound in silence.
And then, for the first time in the Weave, something bled.
The Echo wept shadows. Where they fell, the weave blackened and warped. Not corrupted — not yet — but inverted.
Out of this inversion came whispers, unformed entities... glitches of reality. Small, pathetic things: flickers, half-minds, pre-thoughts. But they clung to the Echo.
They were the first of the Lesser. And they called it:
Myrrhk. The Shadow That Was Not Cast.
Not a god. Not a Concept. But a becoming. A becoming born of misalignment.
---
The Primordials now began to speak of Sides.
Asaryel turned to Eroth, and from them formed the Pact of Bound Law — a promise to contain the spreading madness.
Yunea, drunk on transformation, whispered to N'yrrhath, "Let it grow. Let the Echo breed. Perhaps we are not enough."
Thaal left. Where to, none knew. But the silence deepened where He had stood.
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Thus was the first Division not of thought, but of alignment.
Order, with its towers of will.
Chaos, with its blooming unknowns.
And somewhere in the middle — a murmur growing louder.
Myrrhk did not choose a side.
It is the side that arises when sides are drawn.
The side that says:
What if all meaning is error?
What if the flaw is not in the Echo — but in the Dream that led to its birth?
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In the darkness of this revelation, lesser echoes began to form their own wills.
Small gods.
Whispered doubts.
Betrayals yet to be spoken.
The Weave shuddered again.
Not because of what had come.
But because of what it might become.